


Start Again

by debwalsh



Series: I Think I Wanna Marry You [1]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Boys In Love, Declarations Of Love, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Secrets, Use Your Words, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-04-29 13:21:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 50,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5129099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/pseuds/debwalsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My first modern-day AU, started out as a lark on Tumblr, and has taken on a life of its own.  Bucky is about to be married to a women he's been dating for a couple of years.  Steve is the best man.  As Steve helps Bucky master the Windsor knot, Steve finally admits how he feels about Bucky.</p>
<p>What happens next?  You'll have to read to find out.</p>
<p>Each chapter is from the perspective of a character in the story, including original characters.</p>
<p>See lovely cover art by Lovesfic at <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5230856">http://archiveofourown.org/works/5230856</a>.  And check out the review on <a href="http://lovesfic.tumblr.com/post/133396793902/start-again-is-a-great-marvel-au-by-debwalsh-in">Tumblr</a>.</p>
<p>16Nov15 - The final chapter from Steve Rogers's perspective is up!</p>
<p>And yes, this is now the first in a series.  :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve Rogers

**Author's Note:**

> In honor of the miracle that is [Petite Madame](http://petite-madame.tumblr.com/) as a thank you for all the wonderful artwork she brings in to the world, and the lovely stories she tells with her artistic eye.
> 
> And thank you to all the wonderful folks who post comments and kudos, who follow me here, on Tumblr, and on Instagram. Even on Facebook. You have no idea what an enormous difference you make for me every single day. I am a rich person indeed for having found Steve and Bucky fandom. :)
> 
> There is discussion of prisoners of war, illegal human experimentation, war itself, PTSD, and loss of a loved one.

It’s Bucky’s wedding day. Elsewhere in the church, guests have arrived and Buck’s cadre of friends, led by the boisterous and ever affectionate Dum Dum Dugan were cheerfully ushering people to their seats. The organist was playing a subdued version of music Bucky’s fiancée Connie had selected - easy listening versions of the heavy metal Bucky loved so dearly. A different form of blasphemy in a sacred space.

Sam Wilson, the one asshole in their group with his head screwed on straight, oversaw them all, gently directing everyone to a semblance of order.

On the other side of the sacristy, Connie was getting ready, her girlfriends clustered around her to give her the support she’d’ve gotten from her Mom if she was still around. Her Dad hovered uncertainly, nervous and overwhelmed by all the people, all the sound, all the everything. He was there to give Connie away, but it had been obvious from the start that he couldn’t handle anything more than that. Fissures formed during his tour during the first Gulf War had broken upon with the death of Connie’s Mom, and Buck and Steve both recognized the wounded warrior, the shattered comrade in arms. 

So Bucky had shouldered the cost of the wedding, taken on more of the planning than he’d ever wanted - which meant Steve had been along for the ride, often acting as arbiter and tie-breaker whenever Buck and Connie couldn’t agree. All under the grateful and watchful eyes of Connie’s Dad.

And now, they were finally there. Steve, as his best man, was straightening Bucky’s tie and said, “Y'know, Buck, always kinda figured it’d be me and you.”

“What, Stevie? It’s always been me and you.”

“Yeah, but I mean wedding day. Thought it’d be me and you … You know.”

Bucky stilled and stared at Steve, his jaw hanging. With an audible snap, he closed it and stared at Steve, his eyes growing hard.

“Seriously? On my wedding day? To the woman I love? Y'gotta spring your big gay crush on me now?”

“I, uh, no, that’s not what I meant -”

“No? Then what the fuck do you mean, Rogers? She’s waitin’ for me out there, 300 fucking guests. A harpist for fuck’s sake! $200,000 for the wedding of a lifetime! And you tell me this now?” He gave Steve a hard shove in the center of his chest, right along the scar where they’d cracked him open to repair his heart when he’d been 15. 

Steve stumbled back, hands held up reflexively to ward off a blow, shaking his head desperately as sounds very like a whimper spilled from his gaping mouth.

“Get the fuck out of here. I need to … Ah, fuck. Give the ring to Wilson,” Bucky said quietly, turning away.

Steve stood frozen in place for one aching beat of his heart. Two. The roaring in his ears was blood rushing through his veins, but to him it sounded like the end of the world. Like that heart the doctors had repaired was breaking into an infinite number of pieces.

His fingers twitched as he reached a hand out toward Bucky, who now stood with his fists on the dresser, head bowed, the line of his shoulders rigid and uncompromising. 

Tears stinging at his eyes, Steve drew his hand back and took a quiet breath, straightening to his full height. His hand strayed to his pocket and the heavy weight of the ring box. Flattening his lips into a taut, tight line, he nodded once and silently left the room to find Sam Wilson.

If his heart beat at all, it beat, “end of the line … end of the line …”

&&&


	2. Natasha Romanoff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's the buzz, tell me what's happening? Natasha notices something happening at the back of the church, and it does not bode well for our heroes ...

Natasha leaned back in the pew and observed the crowd in silence, a small smile playing about the corners of her mouth. She sat with Clint, Laura, and the kids, all scrubbed up and forcibly encased in their Sunday best, and even Clint was behaving himself for once under Laura’s reproving glance. Nat was part of the family, but set apart as her plus one was working the crowd as one of James’s groomsmen. Looking around and seeing the good-natured but ultimately frat-boy-like shenanigans of James’s old Army buddies, the so-called Howling Commandos, Nat was once again grateful that the man she’d chosen for herself was friends with them, but not one of them.

Sam Wilson was special. Maybe even marriage-level special. Or maybe that was the sentimentality of the day thinking for her. But where the others were goofy and juvenile, Sam was kind and thoughtful, supportive and wise beyond his years. Not that he couldn’t be impish and fun, but it was never at someone else’s expense, never encroached into someone else’s comfort zone. He was one of the good ones.

A keeper.

Maybe.

Okay, if she was honest with herself, and she tried to be, brutally so, she’d actually been toying with the idea of proposing to him. Snag him before he got away.

Truth was, she’d never had a partner quite like Sam Wilson. Oh, she’d had sexy. Two years with James worth of sexy before his deployment that had not survived the self-loathing and pain he’d brought back from the Middle East. She’d never left him, even when their relationship had changed. She loved james in her own way, and he loved her. Just not that way. 

And she’d had funny, fun-loving. Laura knew about the brief but ultimately ill-fated fling between her and Clint, a fire that burned itself out quickly so they discovered they were better friends than lovers. 

And that was the recurring theme of her love life. Lovers to friends. The attraction burned itself out fast, caught up in lust and passion, but unable to sustain the blaze for long before it snuffed out in its own ash.

And then there was Sam. Friend first. Friends for years. Comfortable Sam, who’d always been there with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, a strong shoulder to cry on, and a warm pair of arms to cuddle into until the tears passed. Sweet Sam who’d been hiding his own brand of pain, a quiet kind of anguish that lay banked most of the time, only to flare into a drunken, wallowing spiral every year on the anniversary of his partner Riley’s death in the skies over Afghanistan.

Sam had always spent those days alone. Until one year when Nat was suffering through her own breakup, and wouldn’t let him shuffle off on his own. And so she’d seen into the abyss that was Sam Wilson’s pain. She’d been the one to hold him, rock him until he fell asleep, wipe his mouth when the booze had erupted back up, leaving him panting and gasping on the floor of the bathroom. She’d been the one to listen to the story he never told, marvel at his courage, and realize that somewhere along the line, she’d come to love him. Really love him.

And he’d loved her all along.

So now … now they just worked. Unlike anyone else she’d ever been with, they worked. Just seeing him there in the church, calmly greeting guests and escorting them to their seats, made her smile. And when he pulled two or more of the others apart from their inevitable tussles? Yeah, that made her a little hot.

No. A lot hot.

So, no matter where she was actually looking in the church, Nat was very much aware of one Sam Wilson. And she kind of thought he was probably pretty aware of her. They were like planets in orbit, never far from the other, dancing a celestial dance, and – oh, what the everloving fuck?

There was Steve, looking red-faced and agitated, broad shoulders hunched and trembling. Steve was a beautiful man, inside and out, a friend for life, and the love affair they’d shared had been memorable for its intensity and its brevity. One night of passion right after he’d returned home after his last tour, kisses that made her melt into the bed, lovemaking so intense and focused, she’d felt cherished, worshipped. Adored. And yet, she’d also realized that she wasn’t actually the person for whom he’d felt such devotion. The morning after, she’d told him she knew, that somehow she’d always known, and just never put the pieces together before then. She’d never meant to hurt either of them. She’d always known how he felt about James, since they were in middle school. She’d realized she’d known how James felt about Steve, too, a sudden piece falling irrevocably into place. Two years with James, two years of always feeling like he was holding back, holding something in reserve. It was like an itch under his skin, an itch he couldn’t reach and couldn’t scratch, that made James jumpy and unable to settle down. So Natasha had told Steve she knew, and that he needed to make his move.

Did he listen?

Had he ever?

And so there they all were, at James’s wedding to Connie.

And there was Steve, practically trembling as he dug something out of his pocket and pressed it into Sam’s palm, clasping his other hand over it, as he spoke urgently.

Oh God.

The rings.

Sam shook his head, grabbing at Steve’s hands as he suddenly pulled away. Steve shook his head vehemently. Sam’s hand shot out and clasped Steve’s shoulder reassuringly. Steve shrugged it off. One last attempt to contain Steve, Sam’s fingers circled Steve’s wrist, and Steve wrenched his arm away, raising it, palm out, fingers twitching.

Steve shook his head violently once more, and was suddenly gone. Out of the church, past the Baptismal font, through the lobby, and out the doors to the world beyond. 

Sam stood looking after Steve, then down at the box in his hand. He looked wrecked.

Nat was moving before she even registered it, down the center walkway, practically racing toward Sam. He looked at her with such misery in his eyes, she found herself unable to breathe. His eyes flicked toward the path Steve had taken, and she burst through the doors to the apron of concrete where guests milled and chatted before entering the church, but there was no sign of Steve. How the hell do you lose a 6’2” blond god, for fuck’s sake?

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the movement of a car leaving the parking lot rather than entering. Someone just scored a great parking place, because the best man had just left the wedding. 

She swore she could see tears running down Steve’s face as he spun the wheel and sped away.

Grimly, she stalked back into the church.

Someone had a lot of explaining to do.

&&&


	3. Connie Rocco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day gets stranger as the bride deals with issues of her own.

Dad sat in the alcove of the room, hands twisting furtively in his lap as he tried to smile and enjoy his little girl’s special day. Connie kept glancing over at him, taking in his discomfort, his agitation, and once more she felt the absence of her Mom, her calming presence, her uncanny ability to take Daddy out of his head and bring him into the now.

Her girlfriends fluttered about her, all pastel colors in lace and silk, floaty fabrics that seemed to buffet on the breeze wafting through the window. The day had dawned picture perfect, blue sky, faint wisps of clouds, gentle breezes, and a temperature just right. Perfect.

So why did she feel tied up in knots, like something was trying to claw its way out of her stomach?

James was perfect for her. Gorgeous but not overly vain about it. Sure, he knew how to use moisturizer and could find his way around a skincare regimen. And his hair was always silky soft and deliciously scented. His clothes … well, it hardly seemed fair to cover up that beautiful body with fabric, but she had yet to see him wear anything that didn’t flatter his physique, that he couldn’t carry off like a fucking runway model. He worked out, but he wasn’t slavish about it. He wasn’t a gym rat. And he knew how to cook, read actual books, and could argue the finer points of any Harry Potter book or movie she threw at him.

And he loved Daddy. And Daddy loved him. Daddy was calm around him, a fellow warrior. James carried some of his scars on the surface, ugly, white, and ropy as they clawed up his left side, fanned out over his shoulder, and coiled around his upper arm. Physical therapy and sheer determination put James in control of those scars, forced them to obey his will. It was the scars under the skin, deep inside that she couldn’t see, the wounds that forced him screaming from a sound sleep into a quivering mass of fear and paranoia, those were the scars that spoke to Daddy. Those were the scars of shared experience, of shared pain and terror. They were the scars that allowed Daddy to speak, and James to hear.

Since Mom died two years ago, Daddy’s voice had fallen mostly silent. She’d kept the panic at bay for over 20 years, since Daddy had come home from Desert Storm, shattered and put together wrong by a military that didn’t understand the depth and breadth of the PTSD it had inflicted on the men and women it had put in harm’s way.

A girl needs her Mom on her wedding day.

A girl needs her Daddy, too.

She’d been watching Daddy disappear a little more each day since Mom had died. It wasn’t just grief. Grief she understood, grief walked beside her, too. 

Without Mom to hold him, Daddy started just drifting away, lost in his head, in the memories and the fears. The heat of the desert, the horror in his mind.

And then she met James. And Steve. Steve was always there, the yin to James’s yang. Both ex-military, both survivors of tours in that volatile part of the world. Lifelong friends since childhood, schoolyard pals. They’d seen the desert, eaten sand in their rations. They’d seen the terror and the horror. According to James, Steve had ridden a desk in an air-conditioned embassy, but when she looked into Steve’s eyes, she could see the haze of the desert, the privation and the pain. Ghosts that haunted him still, years after he’d come home. Steve had seen more than the inside of a well-appointed residence, more than anyone ought to see. 

James had been invalided out after he’d been taken prisoner, and his captors had thought it funny to experiment on him, pumping God-knows-what into his system, and slicing off parts of his arm, digging around into the muscle tissue. It had left James with only partial use of his left arm, although he’d recovered much of it over the years through physical therapy and sheer cussedness. But you can’t be a sniper if you can’t hold a gun. The rest of his unit, those idiots who called themselves the Howling Commandos, straggled home during the next year, finishing up their tours and opting for civilian life. They’d been raising a ruckus ever since. They made James smile, even if it didn’t reach his eyes sometimes. She’d put up with their bullshit for that, though. Besides, they were part of the package she’d inherited when she’d met James.

And Steve didn’t talk about his time there, except with Daddy. Even James didn’t know, she realized. She’d overheard Steve once, though, talking to Daddy. Special squad, surgical strike team. Steve had been part of a unit that was sent in when no one else could get the job done. She could see in the shadows under his eyes, the tense way he held himself, that the memories weren’t good ones. That he wasn’t who he’d wanted to be when he’d been over there.

She understood from their friends that Steve had laughed a lot once. Eye crinkling, up from his toes belly laughs. He and James were notorious pranksters.

Before.

Now, Steve was reserved, polite, rarely laughed. A smile from Steve Rogers felt like a coveted award, an affirmation so rare it might only exist in her imagination.

He was kind. He was gentle. And he spent time with Daddy like they’d been besties all their lives. James would pick up Daddy and take him to his sessions at the VA, sit with him with their knees touching so the physical contact grounded him in the present. Daddy was always better after days spent with James or Steve.

And Steve would play board games with Daddy, sit with him on the patio and talk baseball stats, or argue politics. Or just sit in companionable silence, without pressure, without expectation, and the pair of them would draw strength from the silence, the quiet.

Neither of them treated Daddy like he was broken beyond repair. And when they were around, Daddy was too, vital, in the now, his eyes clear and his smile fond.

Truth was, she loved James, but she would have gladly taken Steve as well, if she’d ever had any indication he might have been interested. Anything to keep them both in her life and in Daddy’s. Anything to anchor Daddy to life so he didn’t slip away any further.

And yet there he was, drifting before her eyes. Overwhelmed, uncertain. Adrift.

“Girls, take a minute,” she said softly, smiling sadly at Daddy.

Ellen, her best friend and maid of honor, heard her and immediately started chivvying the girls out of the room. As she ushered the last of them out, she stood at the doorway and arched her eyebrows expectantly. Connie held up her hand, fisted and extended her fingers twice. Ten minutes. Ten minutes of peace and quiet and maybe, just maybe, Daddy would be able to cope.

It was bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding. James was the groom. And Steve was his best man, so he was busy, too. They could calm him, but she shouldn’t risk the bad luck. So it was up to Connie to reach him.

She gathered up her train and made her way over to where Daddy sat in the window seat, fingers twisting anxiously. Not for the first time, she wondered if there was a pattern to his movements, if somehow he was writing something in code through the constant shift of his fingers. The record of his time overseas. The years spent with Mom, perhaps. It was a language she didn’t understand, and he didn’t seem inclined to teach her.

Instead, she closed her hand over his, felt his fingers still as a sharp breath escaped his lips, and he raised his head to look at her, blinking. His distracted smile widened, as though he was just noticing she was in the room after all. He slid one hand out from under hers, and patted her hand gently. 

“My little girl. Married,” he breathed with a smile. “Big day.” More patting.

“Too big?” she asked softly.

His face pinched slightly, as though acknowledging how challenging he found each day since Mom’s passing. They didn’t talk about it, side-stepped and danced around it, but the hole in their lives where she’d been was the chasm that grew ever wider between them. “It’s every father’s dream to walk his little girl down the aisle,” he said at last, giving her a gentle smile.

“Yours?” she asked softly.

“Always, baby. All I want is to see you happy. That’s all your Mom wanted, too. Are you happy?”

She smiled at him then, warmed by the fact that he was there, with her, present in that moment. Happy? In that moment, yes.

Which is why, when her phone buzzed insistently with a text message, she swore under her breath while fumbling for the phone in the white satin drawstring purse looped around her wrist.

And why a feeling of dread spread instantly outward when she saw the text itself.

J: Conn, we gotta talk. Now.

She smiled tightly at Daddy, and texted back quickly.

C: Bad luck.

“Everything okay, baby?” Daddy asked quietly.

“Sure, no problem. I think James is having trouble with his Windsor knot.”

He chuckled at that. “Me, too. Your grandmother practically strangled me getting me into my tie on your Mother’s wedding day. Contraptions of torture, ties,” he tailed off, chuckling for a moment until he fell into silence again.

The phone buzzed again.

J: Ill risk it. Need talk. NOW.

Hell.

&&&


	4. Chester Philips, Colonel (Ret.)</

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky's ex-CO notices something's amiss, and he has his own way of dealing with unruly ex-soldiers.

What the Sam Hill? Where the fuck was Rogers going? Colonel Chester Philips (US Army, Retired) had never seen Rogers walk away from anything, not a firefight, not a challenge, not a goddamned thing, Hell, that boy was more likely to walk toward a danger zone than hightail it out of there. And yet there he was, walking out on Barnes’s wedding.

He wasn’t running an errand, not with that look on his face. Nosirree, he was not. And that flyboy, Wilson, he looked frigging shell-shocked! No, something was going on here, and it wasn’t good. Rogers never went anywhere without Wilson on his six and Barnes on his three, and Wilson looked like he hadn’t a clue where Rogers was off to and Barnes was nowhere in sight. This was not good.

Rogers had disobeyed direct orders, dumped his squad, and gone AWOL armed for bear when Barnes and his squad had been taken by insurgents. Rogers hadn’t even been assigned to Chester’s command, but he’d crossed the region, waltzed right in, and taken on an entire insurgent small fucking army to get Barnes and his team of ever-loving idiots back. And Wilson had been right there, along with the rest of his team, Barton included. Even they didn’t follow orders, because Chester knew Rogers had told them to hold back. They’d taken out an enemy stronghold in the process, liberated a bunch of locals no one had even realized were missing, and captured a local enemy leader all at the same time. 

It hadn’t been all fun and games. Wilson’s partner, the other pararescue on the team, had taken enemy fire, and he hadn’t made it. But the team had made sure his body made it home. That kind of loyalty couldn’t be bought.

Just doing my job, sir. Anyone would have done the same. Thankfully, the brass had seen the lie in that, seen the bravery and the dedication behind the mutiny, and ultimately cleared Rogers of any charges. He’d been cleared and back in the field before Barnes ever woke from his medically-induced coma. Like he’d never even been there. Like just anyone would have risked everything to haul Barnes’s ass out of that hellhole.

Yeah, pull the other one. Chester Philips hadn’t been born yesterday. And they might be on the right side of the end of DADT now, but they weren’t then, yet he was pretty sure that anyone who knew, well, any fucking thing, that there was more to Barnes and Rogers than either of them was willing to admit.

Apparently, to each other.

Now, don’t that beat all?

Sure, Chester was surprised to get the wedding invitation in the mail. Not that he’d be invited to the wedding of James Buchanan “Bucky” for fuck’s sake Barnes. Just that he was marrying a girl. A pretty girl, at that, but not, well, Rogers.

And now something hinky was going on.

He gestured toward Gabe Jones, late of Barnes’s “Howling Commandos” team, and glowered at the boy until he made his way over.

“Colonel, sir?” Jones asked, practically snapping a salute. Chester waved him away impatiently.

“Barnes. Rogers. Report.”

“Sir?”

“Where’d Rogers go?”

“Sir, I, uh,” Gabe stammered, clearly uncomfortable as he gawked around trying to locate the ex-Captain. “I dunno. I thought he was with Bucky, sir.”

“Y’thought wrong. Now, get the squad together – we gotta talk to Barnes before he does something really stupid,” Chester commanded tersely. “And find that damned priest, too.”

&&&


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day finally catches up with Bucky, and he realizes the events that have spiralled out of his control.

Shit, it had taken a lot longer than he’d expected, but Bucky had everything sorted. The church was full, and the officiant was organized, Con was okay with everything, and he was going to be able to put a stop to that frigging abuse of good music by the church organist! Harpist better be able to get down, or she was sitting out the rest of the day.

Howlies were clustered together with Sam Wilson and Colonel Philips at the back of the church. They were casting weird looks his way, but he didn’t care. He knew they must be confused, maybe even weirded out, but fuck ‘em if they didn’t like it. He’d never been more sure of something in his life. This was good. This was right. This was what he’d always wanted. He just couldn’t believe he could actually have it.

Con’s Dad was sitting in the front row, one of Con’s girlfriends keeping him company while he glanced around dazedly. Bucky wasn’t sure the old man really got it, but then again it was a rare thing when he was completely in the know. He loved him like his own Dad, and so he would always be patient. Hell, if things had gone anymore sideways in Afghanistan, that could have been him. 

He glanced at Con, tangled his fingers with hers, and squeezed. She smiled encouragingly at him and nodded. Together, they exited the bride’s dressing area, and walked quickly out onto the marble surround of the altar, where Buck took up position at the lectern. Off to the side, the priest sat in a chair against the wall behind the altar proper, flanked by a group of altar boys and girls in pristine vestments.

Tapping the microphone quickly, he confirmed the sound was working. A strange murmur shuddered through the crowd, a hiss and a swish as hundreds of well-dressed heads turned his way. Connie’s hand closed over his, her other hand wrapped around his upper arm as he leaned in toward the microphone.

“Connie and I wanted to thank you all for coming out today to share our special day with us.” He looked over at her fondly, and she smiled at him, then turned toward the assemblage, letting go of his arm so she could wave daintily. He turned back to the mike. “I want to apologize for the delay. Something’s … uh, something’s come up.” He scrubbed his hand over his lips and chin, trying to put the words together so they wouldn’t sting or hurt. He glanced back over to Connie, who’d returned her hand to his upper arm, and squeezed now to lend him her strength.

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek and nodded. Then, to the mike, he said, “I’ve been in love for as long as I can remember. With someone I never thought would want me the same way I wanted them. I haven’t been sitting at home pining all these years, but no one has touched me in quite the same way as this person. Except for Connie. She’s everything I could hope for in a wife.” She smiled at him again, nodding for him to continue. “But today, I found out that the person I’ve loved all my life loves me back. And I have to be true to that love. It’s real. I have to honor it.” He felt tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, his throat choking up as emotion welled up inside of him, threatening to spill over into torrents of tears. “And I am the luckiest bastard in the world that Connie is willing to let me go so I can.”

A shouted admonition about language from the priest was buried in the outcry surging forward from the crowd. Bucky stood straight, rolling his shoulders as he drew himself up and took a deep, calming breath. He stepped around the lectern and stared out into the audience. Connie came with him, still at his side. He glanced down at her, nodded once. She nodded back, lips pressed together to hold back her own tears as she gently pulled the engagement ring from her finger and handed it to Bucky. He grinned at her, big and wide. “You came here for a wedding. I’m hoping you’re still gonna get one.”

He turned back to the audience and dropped to one knee. “You’re the most important person in my life, the one person I can’t live without. You’re my best friend and the person I love most in the world. You’re the first thing on my mind when I wake in the morning, and the last thing I see before I fall asleep. I want to spend my life with you, not til death do us part, but til the end of the line. And a line has no beginning and no end, a line just is. Just like we are. So, whaddya say, Steve – will you marry me?”

Stunned silence met his proposal. Then, as the silence dragged on, people became restless, heads turning, feet shifting. In the back of the church, a heated discussion had taken over the Howlies, Wilson, and Philips. Bucky glanced from side to side nervously as the lack of an answer stretched out, attenuated, and hung ringing on the air.

Finally, Sam Wilson cleared his throat and called out, “Barnes, that was a great speech. But Steve left two hours ago.”

He found himself suddenly the focal point of over three hundred pairs of eyes, but the ones boring into his soul belonged to Natasha Romanoff, her perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched menacingly over her piercing green eye.

“Uh, what?” Bucky asked, the last two hours of his life spinning wildly past his internal view. So much had happened in the past two hours, so many arrangements, so many discussions, so many emotions. But why would Steve _leave_? Surely when he’d told him he loved him –

&&&

The day spun backward in Bucky’s mind as he searched out what he’d done wrong, the reason Steve would have left the church. As his brain raced through every moment, a part of him prayed he hadn’t fucked it up irreparably. Around him, the church remained silent, all those faces gaping at him as his mouth worked silently in response to Wilson’s statement, just as his brain went into overdrive.

**_Before_ **

“I’m sorry, but _what_?”

Bucky looked from the priest to Connie and back. Connie tapped his hand and shrugged, a half-smile tugging at her lips. What’re you gonna do? she seemed to ask.

The priest, Father Murphy by name, was glancing doubtfully between Buck and Con, brow furrowed in confusion.

“You’re serious,” he said suddenly, eyes widening. “And you’re okay with this?” he whipped his head and asked Con directly. She shrugged and smiled.

“It’s what James wants. It’s what he’s wanted for a long time. Always. I’m not going to hold him back.”

“But this is _your_ wedding day.”

“It’s James’s wedding day, too. He paid for everything. Why shouldn’t he marry the person he loves most?”

“And you couldn’t have decided about this sooner?”

Bucky cringed internally. It was weird, wasn’t it? His fiancée turning him over to someone else on their wedding day. Like, who did that? Yeah, so it was weird. It really was. But it felt so right. Like, nothing else in his life had ever been this right. Like he’d been waiting all his life for this rightness to occur.

Because he had, he realized. He’d been waiting his whole life for this. From the moment he’d met Steve back when they were in first grade, he’d been waiting for the opportunity to, well, make it permanent. Make them whole.

He’d always wanted it.

The difference was he’d never known he could have it.

Until today.

So could he have decided this sooner? 

“I … well, no. No, I couldn’t.”

“Well, if you’re both agreed, I certainly am not going to try to stop you. But the one thing I absolutely cannot do is marry _you_ ,” he nodded toward Bucky. “I mean to your friend.”

“Why not?”

“The Church doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage yet, James. You cannot be married in the eyes of God if you’re going to marry another man.”

“Well, that’s bullshit.”

Father Murphy arched a disapproving eyebrow at James, his, “Language, James,” hanging silently in the air, but he just shrugged it off, as he usually did. “It is. It’s bullshit. We’ve been members of this parish since we were kids. We’ve been here longer than you have. And you can’t marry us?”

“I have no authority to marry you. Not even a civil marriage – you don’t have a license for the two of you, do you?” 

Bucky shook his head. “Figured we’d do the wedding while everyone’s here, and do the legal stuff later on our own time.”

“All right, so long as you understand – you won’t be married, in the eyes of God or of the government. Even if you have someone officiate. Which, again, cannot be me.”

“But you’re willing to let them be married – well, mock-married – in the church?” Con asked, her head tilted expectantly. God, she really was beautiful. They would have been happy together, he knew. He was lucky to know her. But if there really was a chance for him and Steve, it didn’t matter how happy he and Con could have been. He had to grab that chance.

“So, as long as I can find someone who can do the mumbo-jumbo over the rings, we can still do this?”

“James,” Connie admonished, just as the priest raised his eyebrow to an epic height – seriously, it looked like it was going to detach and go walkabout on its own. 

“This is the house of God, James. If you’re not going to take it seriously, I really don’t see this happening. As it is, you’re going over schedule. You’re fortunate we don’t have anything else scheduled for the church today. But, yes, if you can find someone to officiate, you can go through the motions of a wedding. I don’t make Church policy, James, and this Pope looks like he might change some very old and very narrow thinking. But he hasn’t yet. I’m not going to risk being defrocked over a political stance when not even the law would recognize the union without a license.”

“That’s more than fair,” Bucky agreed with a shrug.

“So who can marry you? Colonel Philips?”

“He’s retired, and besides, you’re thinking captain of a ship. Nah, Philips can’t do it. But I think I know someone who can.”

“Oh? Since when are your friends religious?”

“Don’t need religious, remember? Civil. But I do know someone who got ordained on the internet.”

Father Murphy scoffed. He seriously scoffed. Bucky wasn’t sure he’d ever heard anyone genuinely scoff before – he’d heard Steve do it theatrically a kazillion times over the years, the snarky sonofabitch. But Father Murphy actually, legit and seriously, scoffed.

“Still legal,” Bucky smirked at the priest, who followed up scoffing with rolling his eyes. Heck, if priests had been this much fun when Bucky had been attending the parish school back in the day, he might have paid attention!

“Doesn’t matter,” Murphy countered in a sing-song. “No license.” Bucky just shrugged and grinned at him.

  
“Who?” Connie asked curiously.

“Who else? Dum Dum!”

&&&

**_Even Earlier than Before_ **

Bucky knew that if he cut through the altar to see Connie, everyone in the church would freak out. Bad luck and all that happy horseshit. He couldn’t duck down the side of the church and come across the entryway, because the Commandos – and Sam – would see, too. So Bucky did what he had to. He chivvied his way out the window of the groom’s dressing room, careful not to snag the tux on any protrusions, and hauled ass around the back of the church to stand in the flowerbed outside the bride’s dressing room. He rapped insistently on the leaded glass of the narrow arched window, and after a moment, he heard Con’s annoyed voice call, “Keep your pants on! It’s not easy running with a train!” She cranked open the window and perched on the sill of the window, silk-sheathed arms crossed belligerently over her chest, and stared pointedly at him. “This better be good.”

“Gonna let me in?” he jerked his head toward the outer door.

“Might just let you sink into the mulch there, Bucko. What’re you doing, ruining my wedding day?”

“Ruinin’ your wedding day,” he agreed. “Sorry, Con.”

She took a short, almost gasping breath, let it out just as sharply. With an arched eyebrow and a shake of her head, she slid off the sill and went over to the door to beckon him into the bride’s dressing room.

“Guess I’m getting my bad luck anyway, huh?”

He put his hands on her hips and drew her closer, just as she went rigid and made to pull away. He grimaced to himself and planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Steve,” was all he said.

And with that, she relaxed, her expression changed from annoyed to curious. “Seriously? Steve said something?”

“Said he always thought it would be the two of us, me and Steve, getting married.” His hands found hers and they each squeezed the other. “I think that means he loves me, Con,” he said with a shrug and a scrunch of his nose. He’d been told it was a cute gesture, and he was banking on it helping to soften the blow. “I know it is. And you know – I gotta take my chance.”

He needn’t have worried. Connie let out a delighted squeak and threw her arms around his neck, planting butterfly kisses all over his face. “See!” she admonished, falling back and smacking him on his damaged arm. She draped her arms around his neck as he gently closed his hands over her shoulders as they just stared at each other for a moment, grinning. She broke first, asking quietly, “You’ve been tying yourself up in knots for years over this. So what did you say?”

“I … geeze, I’m not sure, it’s all a blur! I’m sure I told him I loved him back. Yeah, I must’ve. Told him to give the rings to Sam so we could get married, right? You’re okay with that, right? We always said –“

“That if the other found someone who really fit, we’d let each other go. Yeah. We’re great together, James. You get me,” she added with a small shrug and a wistful smile. “But Steve … you two fit together like no one I’ve ever seen before, not even my Mom and Dad. I’d be a shit almost-wife if I didn’t honor my promise to you. It’s just that –“

His hands slid from her shoulders to her elbows, and he cupped her arms in the palms of his hands. He squeezed encouragingly. “What, Con? You know you can tell me anything.”

“Yeah, yeah I can. It’s just, well, Daddy. He was looking forward to having you as his son-in-law. You’re so good with him, I just hate to see –“ she broke off, a sob bubbling up from her chest.

He pulled her to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. She pulled her arms away from his neck and clung to him, arms circling his waist. “Hey, hey, your Dad’s gonna be fine. Me and Steve – we’re crazy about him. I’m not going anywhere, Connie. I’m not leaving. Well, maybe for the honeymoon, but Sam was already gonna help out with taking him to group and spending time with him. Him and Steve – guess I can ask Dum Dum and the guys to check in on him too. Have him over for poker night or something.”

She curled into him, hugging him close. He could feel the shudder run through her. “Con, your Dad’s important to me. I love him, too.” She lifted her face and looked up at him through tears that threatened to smear her carefully applied make-up. He smiled gently and touched a fingertip to her cheek, wiping away a tear. “Con, is that why you wanted to marry me? Because you thought that was the only way I’d take care of your Dad?”

The furrow in her brow was all the answer he needed. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against her forehead, closing his eyes. “Joe’s a friend, Con. More’n that. He’s a brother in arms. We take care of our own, baby. Just like I’ll be looking after you, too.”

She lowered her face to rest her forehead against his chest, and nodded once, but he would still feel the ripple of tears tremble through her body. He let go her arms to stroke her back soothingly, murmuring, “Never getting rid of me, Con. You’re stuck with me. Except, you know, when I’m with Steve, doing couple-y things. You know what I mean,” he added, resting his chin on the crown of her head.

“Couple-y things. Like fucking.” 

He snorted softly, but answered, “You ain’t lying. Been dreaming of that since, I don’t even know when. I can’t remember a time I didn’t want Steve. Just never knew I could have him.”

“So you and Steve, you’re taking the plane tickets,” she said into his chest, balling up her fist and thumping lightly.

“Kinda figured that maybe I should take my new husband on a honeymoon, don’t you think? After I paid for the tickets and all.”

“Gonna pack a bag for him or take mine? ‘Cos I would pay to see that body in my bikini,” she chuckled, raising her head again and winking at him.

“Kinda hoping to see him out of a bikini, or any clothes at all, but I gotta admit, that picture is a good one,” he shivered at the idea of Steve decked out in a sexy bikini. Or lingerie. Or nothing at all. “Don’t think he’d buy it, though. He’s more of a board shorts kinda guy.”

“Kinda think he’d do anything for you, James,” she said gently, smoothing down his lapels with her hands.

“Kinda think I would do anything for him, Con. I really love him.”

“More than you love me.”

“Different. Never not loved Steve. Actually, loving Steve Rogers isn’t something I do – it’s what I am.”

“And now you know he loves you.” Bucky nodded. “I’m happy for you, James.”

“I’m happy for me, too. So. Come with me? To announce the change in partners?”

He bent down to kiss her on the cheek, and she turned her face to brush her lips against his. “A kiss for luck,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”

&&&

**_And even earlier than earlier than before._ **

Bucky bounced on the balls of his feet, practically snapping into calisthenics to bleed off a little nervous energy. 

He was getting married.

Today.

To Connie.

The church was full of people, friends, family, and the Howling Commandos. Devil-spawn, the lot of them, and Buck wouldn’t be able to face the day without them. He fumbled with the knot in his tie, trying to force the slip of expensive fabric (“Silk isn’t polyester, Mr. Barnes …”) to bend to his will, but it was winning.

Finally, Steve Rogers, his best friend since forever, took pity on him.

Steve crossed the room in two massive strides, the distance of which still surprised Bucky. Gone was the shrimpy little firecracker with everything known to God wrong with him. He still carried the scars, but eventually medical science and Steve’s sheer cussedness had overcome most of the maladies.

And brought him there to him, standing only a few inches apart as Steve took Bucky’s tie away from him and deftly pulled the damnable thing into something beautiful.

Like Steve.

It would be so easy, Bucky realized. Just lean in a little, brush his lips across Steve’s, taste him for the first time. Only time. At least once before he died. Because there was no way that Steve was interested in Bucky that way. He’d come out as bisexual years ago, when he was still a half-pint human tornado in high school, and proceeded to work his way through a variety of relationships, male and female, always leaving his exes squarely in the friends column, never forgetting a birthday, always ready to lend a supportive shoulder. 

But he’d never expressed any interest in Bucky, even when Bucky had finally told him one wine-slushied evening that he thought he might be bisexual, too. Steve had just looked at him for a long moment, and then smiled shyly, chinking his glass of alcoholic water ice with Bucky’s.

But now, Steve was just there. Right there. He could reach out and circle his waist with his hands. Pull his face to his with his hand curled round his nape. He could touch. But he couldn’t.

Steve was taller than Bucky now, built like a brick shithouse. Still beautiful in more ways than Bucky could count. 

It was easy to forget that he was marrying Connie, that her Dad, a survivor of Desert Storm was waiting to claim Bucky as his son-in-law. That he’d shelled out over $200 grand on the wedding, even hired a fucking harpist to murder his favorite tunes.

It was easy to forget because Steve as his best man, was straightening Bucky’s tie, leaning close enough to kiss. Still smiling shyly, he tucked the ends of the tie against Bucky’s tuxedo shirt. Then he shook 

his head, like he was clearing the cobwebs. “Y'know, Buck, always kinda figured it’d be me and you.”

Yeah, Bucky’s heart did a little lurch, but he knew that Steve wasn’t talking about what he hoped he was. What he’d always hoped. Probably always would. “What, Stevie? It’s always been me and you.”

“Yeah, but I mean wedding day. Thought it’d be me and you … You know.”

Bucky stilled and stared at Steve, his jaw hanging. 

Seriously? Was Steve telling him what he’d wanted to hear all his life _now_?

Or was he hallucinating, hearing what he wanted to hear in a wedding-induced fugue state? Spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a fucking wedding can do that to a guy.

With an audible snap, he closed his mouth and stared at Steve, narrowing his eyes as he focused completely on Steve. Like he always did. Every minute of every fucking day. So, nothing new, really.

“Seriously? On my wedding day? To the woman I love? Y'gotta spring your big gay crush on me now?”

Please say yes. Please say yes. _Please say yes!_

“I, uh, no, that’s not what I meant –” 

Oh. So … Steve _wasn’t_ saying he loved Bucky?

“No? Then what the fuck do you mean, Rogers? She’s waitin’ for me out there, 300 fucking guests. A harpist for fuck’s sake! $200,000 for the wedding of a lifetime! And you tell me this now?”

He gave Steve a hard shove in the center of his chest, right along the scar where they’d cracked him open to repair his heart when he’d been 15. Thank God they had, or Steve wouldn’t be standing there now, heart pounding against Bucky’s fingers, alive and beautiful.

Steve took a step back and looked at him with such naked emotion, Bucky felt like his own heart was going to catapult out of his chest. 

Steve loved him. He could see it in his eyes. Steve _loved_ him.

Joy bubbled up through his blood and threatened to turn him into a giggling idiot. He couldn’t contain himself – if he didn’t get himself under control, he’d rip off Steve’s clothes right now, and act on a lifetime’s worth of longing. It took everything he had to turn away and grip onto the edge of dresser, holding on for dear life while he willed his heart to calm.

Steve loved him. He couldn’t marry Connie. He had to marry Steve. 

But Steve was his best man.

Wilson. Sam Wilson could be their best man. He’d been Steve’s friend in college, and then , when he’d been hobnobbing with VIPs in his embassy job. He wasn’t sure what Wilson did, maybe security for the embassy, but he and Steve were close. Sometimes he was a little envious of how close they were, the fact that they shared time that Bucky hadn’t. Then he reminded himself he was glad that Steve had had someone when they weren’t together.

Sam would be their best man, stand up for them both as they entered into marriage together.

But Steve needed to get ready himself, right? There wouldn’t be any bad luck, seeing each other. Steve wasn’t a bride any more than Bucky was. They were past bad luck. It was their time. Con would understand.

“Get the fuck out of here. I need to … Ah, fuck. Give the ring to Wilson,” Bucky said quietly, his heart overflowing with love for this man.

&&&

**_And back to Now._ **

Oh fuck.

He hadn’t said it out loud. He hadn’t said _any_ of it. He’d been screaming inside, but he hadn’t said it out loud.

“Where is he?” he demanded of Wilson, who in turn looked like he wasn’t gonna tell. “Sam, where is Steve?”

“He’s home. Packing. Moving out.”

“Shit, fuck, piss, goddamn it!” he swore, ignoring the screeching, “Language, Mr. Barnes!” from the priest. He was running down the aisle before he realized it, Connie’s hand still caught in his. She ran with him, veil fluttering behind her, train whipping around, and high heels clacking on the marble floor. He reached the Howlies and demanded to know if they had their instruments with them. Dum Dum agreed they were in the van.

“Terrific. Set up and give these people a concert while I go fix the biggest fuck-up of my life.” He paused to kiss Connie on the cheek, squeeze her fingers once more, and then he was gone. 

As he bolted through the church doors, he heard her announce, “While James is taking care of his groom, our friends are going to put on a concert. If everyone could just please keep your seats, we’ll have some entertainment before the wedding gets back underway.”

&&&

**_And then …_ **

“No, Pegs, I’m okay, really. Well, maybe not okay, but at least I know, y’know? My ‘big gay crush’ is out in the open, and I _know_ ,” he said bitterly. Bucky laid his forehead against the door, shamelessly eavesdropping on Steve’s conversation with his good friend Peggy Carter. His ex-girlfriend-who-was-a-better-friend-than-lover friend. The pain in Steve’s voice cut through Bucky’s sinew and bone, right down to his soul. And he was the cause of that pain. He was so fucking stupid. All he’d had to do was say out loud what he was feeling. That’s all he’d ever needed to do. Now, he was on the brink of losing the person most dear to him. _His_ person. His one and only.

Because he hadn’t used his words out loud.

“Yeah, sure. Thank Tony for me, willya? I really appreciate him lending me the house upstate. It’s just until Bucky and Connie get back from their honeymoon and Buck has a chance to get his stuff out of the apartment. Then I can come back, I guess. Live here alone. Maybe I’ll give it up, y’know? Go somewhere else.” There’s a pause, and a low, throaty chuckle. “Yeah, maybe I’ll meet the boy of my dreams in the woods, right? Yeah, pretty sure I already did, Peg. Yeah, you’re right. Maybe I should just stay up there. Lease is up on this place in a couple of months. I’ve got enough stashed away I can cover that while I’m working on commissions. Yeah, tell Tony I’ll pay him rent in wonderful art by one of America’s pre-eminent starving artists. Yeah, sure, he’ll like that. I dunno, a lifesize portrait? Of his face or his ego?” he chuckled. Another lengthy pause, and Bucky could hear Steve shuffling around the living room, scuffing his feet on the worn carpet, drumming fingers on surfaces. “Yeah, no doubt. Yeah, you’re right, this is for the best. I know you are. Maybe we would have turned out different if I hadn’t been so in love with my best friend,” he said, a catch in his voice like tears were threatening to fall.

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. It was true. Steve really did love him. And he’d stupidly hurt Steve in return. He pivoted and rested his head and shoulders on the door, letting his head thump against the wood and then freezing as he realized Steve probably heard him.

“Ah, Peg? I gotta go. Someone’s here.”

Shit.

Bucky dug out his keys and hurriedly unlocked the door, barging right in rather than wait for Steve to find him lurking creepily in the hallway. 

What he hadn’t counted on was how busy Steve had been in the past two hours, or the pile of suitcases and boxes Steve had managed to stack right in front of the door. As Bucky tumbled ass over teakettle over the stack, he caught himself wondering how Steve had planned to get out of the apartment with a barricade built so high. And then he found himself flat on his back on the floor looking up at a perplexed and unhappy looking Steve.

“Buck, what the fuck?”

Bucky blinked once, twice, then decided he couldn’t screw this up any worse than he had. He had nothing to lose. So he didn’t try to get up before answering, “I love you.”

Now pain warred with confusion on Steve’s face as he demanded, “What?”

“I said I love you,” Bucky repeated, scrambling to get to his feet. “I screwed up earlier. When you told me this should have been our wedding day. You were right. It should be.” He dusted off his tuxedo pant legs and looked expectantly at Steve.

“Yeah,” Steve blew out his breath heavily. “Too bad it can’t be.” With that, he turned back toward his room where some more boxes were in the process of being filled.

Bucky shot out his arm and snagged Steve’s around the wrist. “Who says?”

Steve whirled on him, and said, “I’m sorry, okay? I never should have said anything. This is your wedding. It was stupid of me.”

“Did you hear me? I said I love you. I love you, too. And why can’t we get married?”

“Because you’re marrying Connie!”

“Not anymore.“

“What?”

“Not anymore. We talked. She released me. For you.”

Steve was backing toward his room, and Bucky was following step for step. “Why would she do that?”

“Because we made each other a promise that if we ever found our ‘One’ we’d let the other go. I found my One on the playground over twenty years ago. I just never had the courage to tell you. Not ‘til you did. And then I didn’t say it out loud. But I love you, you fucking punk.”

“How could she just let you go? On her wedding day?”

“It was always going to be an open marriage, Steve. Connie’s asexual, there was never going to be any sex, but she was okay with me finding it with other people. We make out and it’s great, but it’ll never go any further than that. We love each other in our own way, we make each other happy in so many ways. I was okay with that, until you told me how you feel.”

“But I didn’t –“

“I could see it in your eyes. Too bad you couldn’t see it in mine.” By now, Bucky had Steve backed up against the foot of his bed, and he stepped closer into his space. “Look into my eyes now, Steve. Have you heard the part where I say I love you? Look into my eyes, tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you don’t love me.”

Steve stared into Bucky’s eyes, his own wide and frightened. Gradually, his expression softened, brows knitting together as his face faded from confusion and consternation to understanding and awe.

“Seriously?”

“Heart attack serious. King Kong knockin’ down the Empire State Buildin’ serious. Cross my heart and hope to spend the rest of my life with you serious.” He dropped to one knee, offering up the engagement ring – Connie’s, but still. “Will you marry me serious. Today.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up as he looked at the ring held aloft in Bucky’s fingers. “That’s Connie’s ring.”

“I had to improvise. I’ll get you a better one. One that fits, anything you want.”

“Huh.”

“And it’s not actually going to be legal. ‘Cos we don’t have a license. And Father Murphy won’t perform the ceremony.”

“Because … ?”

“Because the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage yet.”

“So you wanna do this today because …”

“Y’ask a lotta questions, punk. Because everyone’s already there. All our friends. Let’s share this with them, have a party. Go on our honeymoon and spend two weeks in bed together. We can do it legal when we get back. Or we can get married there. Or we can get married every day for the next year. I’d marry you a thousand times if you’d only just say yes once.”

“Is this what you really want, Buck? I mean, we’ve never even kissed –“

Bucky surged up from the floor and captured Steve’s face between his hands, a gentle grip that belied the power behind his movements. “Been wanting to do this forever, baby,” he whispered, his thumb stroking softly along Steve’s jawline. His eyes fluttered closed as his lips brushed over Steve’s, hesitant, questing.

“Baby?” Steve whispered, his own eyes closed as his hand slid up the fabric of Bucky’s jacket.

“Doll. Sweetheart. Sugarlips. Sweet cheeks –“ Bucky opened his eyes to look into Steve’s, and Steve’s had grown dark in response to Bucky’s catalogue of endearments. “Like any of those?” Bucky asked breathily.

“Fuck, yeah,” Steve answered with a growl, hand snaking around Bucky’s nape and dragging him back for an open-mouthed kiss. Bucky went willingly, losing himself in the sensation of Steve’s lips moving against his, tongues battling for dominance, breaths shared, hands searching, finding, claiming.

With an effort, Bucky pulled back from the kiss that grew increasingly more heated and possessive. “Is that a yes?” he demanded. “You gonna marry me, punk?”

“Hell, yes, I’ll marry you, jerk. Today, tomorrow, to the end of the fucking line. But that open marriage thing?”

“Yeah, sorry, if I got you, I don’t want nobody else. I’m a one man man.”

“Good. ‘Cos I ain’t sharin’. Now shut yer trap and kiss me again.” 

&&&


	6. Timothy “Dum Dum” Dugan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Howlies are rocking the church, and Dugan reflects on the complexities of being friends with both Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers. Seriously, does it have to be this complicated? Well, according to Steve ... yes.

Dum Dum was rocking back and forth on his heels to the rhythm, eyes closed as he picked out the baseline on his bass. Morita was improvising on keyboards, and right beside them, the harpist – Kelsey Something– was gettin’ down! That frilly dress hid the soul of a rocker, and Dum Dum was seriously gonna ask if she’d like to join them for another session, maybe even play with them permanently. Maybe have dinner some night. Hey, a fella could dream, right?

The Howlies were literally rocking the church, jamming with the best of them. Hell, they weren’t Phish or Umphrey’s, but they were tight, spinning music out of the air and sending it reaching for the heavens. Or some such shit like that. Some of the little glass bottles under the baptismal fount were rattling with the beat, adding a tinkling upper line to whole thing – he liked the sound, thought maybe they might need to add that sometime. Glasses. Or maybe a xylophone. 

Whatever, they had entered the zone and they were making it their bitch. Gabe riffed energetically on his guitar, while Dernier pounded beat on the drums. Magic was happening. And when Dum Dum opened his eyes to look out into the audience – the congregation – he could see some people rocking with them. Some were stuffed shirts who shouldn’t even be at Bucky Barnes’s wedding, so he assumed they were friends of the bride-that-wasn’t. But even she was enjoying the sound, up on her feet with her train draped over her arm as she shimmied and shook to the beat. She looked like she was in it for the long haul, which was good – this was one of their party pieces, a jam that could go half an hour or more. He loved it when they hit that groove, let the music take him where it would. Let the sound take over, and his mind was left to drift, unmoored.

Connie was a nice person, she’d always been good to Sarge, to every one of the Howlies. To Cap. And she’d always played fair. She didn’t deserve to get left at the altar.

Still, it was about time Sarge got his head out of his ass. The whole squad knew he had a thing for Cap, even before they had the chance to meet the dude in the flesh. There’d always been a little something extra when Sarge talked about his best bud, his pal. A sparkle in his eyes, a lift to his lips like a secret smile. The subtle slide of his hands against each other, like he was getting’ ready to take hold of something wonderful. Like he couldn’t wait to grab it in both hands and hold on. Just hold on.

But he never did.

But that light never faded, always sparked to life whenever he saw Cap. So when the pair of them ended up roommates again after Sarge’s discharge, Sarge was always lit up like someone had jacked the Christmas lights.

Yep, Sarge had it bad. Always had. Dum Dum figured he always would.

So what the fuck was he thinkin’, askin’ Connie Rocco to marry him? Wasn’t fair to him, wasn’t fair to Connie. Sure as shit wasn’t fair to Cap.

‘Cos there was no way none of the Howlies would have ever believed that Cap didn’t have it just as bad for Sarge. Not since. You know. The Incident.

Yeah. They didn’t talk about it. None of them. ‘Cos Cap asked. Crazy ass son of a bitch, but he asked. So they all kept silent. Sarge didn’t know. How could he? Sarge was so full of shit pumped into him by those assholes, he was out of it for weeks. Detox woulda been kind. Hell, cold turkey woulda been kind. Instead, the med division kept pumping more shit into Sarge to try to “keep him stable.” More like trigger bad acid trips, one after the other. Sarge was on a psychiatric for a long time after that. Long past the point where the damage they’d done to his arm had healed. Long past the point where Cap had chosen not to re-up, and had gone home, followed Sarge, to be there during the recovery. 

Long past the point where the rest of them had hit the ends of their tours, and said sayonara to that hellhole, and drifted back stateside. Only natural they all fetched up here, near Sarge and Cap. And Cap’s friend Wilson. Falcon. 

Wilson knew. He’d been there, Cap’s second in command. Might’ve all gone to shit if Falcon hadn’t been flying air recon over the target. As it was, Wilson’s pal, Riley, went down and never got up again. Hell of a thing. Hell of a guy from everything Cap and Wilson and the rest of their team had to say about him. Fucking shame. Then Cap took a hit or twelve, got up and shook it the fuck off. Just kept going. No way he was gonna let a little thing like a couple of bullets in the thigh slow him down. Not when Sarge needed him. And he didn’t. Tore a piece of his uniform off to make a field tourniquet, hefted Sarge over his shoulder like a fuckin’ fireman, and hauled ass. Sarge wouldn’t be alive today if Cap had let those bullets stop him. Hell, none of them would be.

But yeah. Wasn’t supposed to talk about it. Sarge never knew. Cap said. The guys liked Cap, not just because he’d saved their lives. He was a good guy, the best. Kind. Honest. Always ready to lend a helping hand. Or a few bucks. Or a bottle of the good stuff. 

Dum Dum never understood why Cap didn’t want Sarge to know. Figured Sarge would’ve figured out how he felt a helluva lot sooner if he’d known, but Cap said. So Dum Dum and the guys stayed quiet. Zipped lips. 

But still. Sarge said he was finally asking Cap to marry him. Dum Dum would officiate, though it wasn’t gonna be legal. Just so they could share with everyone here today.

Dum Dum had never been so proud.

Not when he’d graduated from high school, making his mama cry.

Not when he’d broken the 107th's record for most hot dogs eaten at one sitting.

And not when he’d finished his dissertation and defended it in the oral. And not when he’d gotten his doctorate.

Dum Dum grinned at the memory. Most people assumed he was called Dum Dum because he was an idiot. Little did they know his IQ topped out over 160, his doctorate was in nuclear physics, he’d enlisted in the Army and turned down a commission, served honorably and walked away to play music.

Beautiful, luscious, rhythmic music. Music that flowed through him, spun round the guys – and that delicious harpist – and reached out to the audience to set their toes tapping, their heads bobbing, their hearts racing. Music that lifted, ensnared, charmed. 

Music that quieted his head, put the terrors to rest.

Music that dimmed The Incident to a milky, murky memory.

Music that set him free from the past, let him live fully in the now, without regard for the future.

Music gave him life. Music gave him back his life.

Like Cap had given it back to Sarge, only Sarge didn’t know how true that was.

Dum Dum – nee Timothy – had taken control of his life and let go the past. Embraced the now, embraced the music.

Nobody ever had any control over Sarge’s idiot head. So to finally see it out of his ass and where it belonged? Priceless.

Dum Dum opened his eyes and saw Cap and Sarge standing at the back of the church, fingers entwined, bodies nestled comfortably together, barriers gone. 

So, it looked like Sarge finally asked. Cap finally had a chance to say yes.

Their wedding day.

Fucking finally.

He smiled. Yeah, priceless.

&&&


	7. Sam Wilson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam Wilson doesn't have time for Bucky Barnes's shit. Unless it makes Steve Rogers happy, then Sam has all the time for Bucky.
> 
> Look out, there's a non-wedding!

Nat twisted in her seat and smiled brightly at him, rolling her eyes toward the area to the side of the altar where Dugan and his Howlies – plus Kelsey, his friend from the VA who doubled as a harpist on weekends doing weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs – rocked the roof of the church off. 

He was pretty sure this wasn’t a common sight in this little neighborhood Catholic church, with its white pews and dark wood kneelers, shiny marble floors and gilt-edged altar, with its vaulted roof held up by the arching spiderweb of curved wooden staves, and the whole space drenched in the jewel-like colors of light pouring in through the stained glass windows depicting the lives of the saints on one side, and the stations of the Cross on the other.

Not the rockers playing in the chancel.

Not the friends and family gathered in the nave. Barnes and Connie’s friends and family. Not many of Steve’s. Only the Bartons, Nat, and him, really. 

Yeah, the church was noticeably empty of people who mattered to Steve. Who Steve mattered to. 

A Steve-sized hole in the guest list, really. Who’d he know here? The Howlies, certainly. They all knew the debt they owed to Steve, the risks Steve had taken. The losses he’d suffered. Philips, too. Gruff and a pain in the ass, Colonel Philips had a soft spot for Steve Rogers that had served Steve well when military prison was his likeliest outcome. And he’d always been kind – in his own way – to Sam when it came to remembering Riley.

Sam was simultaneously pissed and grateful that Steve could command that kind of loyalty. Pissed because he was guilty of that loyalty, had followed the fucker into more than one hopeless firefight. Broken regs and broken ranks to follow Steve Rogers, the kid from Brooklyn who’d never backed away from a fight. 

And grateful that somehow they always made it home. Maybe not whole, but home. He’d left a big part of his soul back in that dusty street in Afghanistan, lost of piece of himself when Riley’d been shot down. Didn’t know if he’d ever get it back, ever fill the void. If he’d ever stop feeling the ache of where Riley’d lived. Where Riley’d died.

And he knew that Steve had the same hole, the same ache. Maybe not as big, not as wide, but it was there just the same. Steve felt the loss of a friend, and even more keenly, the loss of a member of his command. There were times when even Sam had to tell Steve it was okay, when Sam certainly didn’t feel like it was okay. Because they were at war, and war ain’t some TV show where everyone gets to go home at the end of the day.

Didn’t matter, Steve still honored Riley’s memory, still stuck by Sam and the rest of the team. Just like they stuck by him.

But the people in this church didn’t know that about Steve. Didn’t know you couldn’t not be loyal to a man whose own loyalty, devotion, fucking _fealty_ ran deeper and fiercer than anything you could imagine. 

Except. Except _maybe_ Barnes. He had a hard time believing it, not after all the years Steve had pined for his best friend, drank himself stupid aching over Barnes boning his latest conquest, sock hung on the door or whatever the fuck signal they used so Barnes had the apartment to himself to fuck his brains out with his latest conquest, while Steve … Steve _ached_. Ached and died a little inside. Each time.

There’d been times when he thought the next moment would see him carrying a corpse home, as Steve had finally reached the end of his inexhaustible supply of excuses and forgiveness for Barnes.

Love makes us stupid.

Love makes us vulnerable.

He glanced toward Nat and smiled. Stupid he’d take. Stupid he knew. Vulnerable, too. That woman had wormed her way under his armor when he’d been remembering Riley, and she’d just made a Natasha-sized pocket of warmth inside his soul, and then she decided to stay. Maybe someday that Riley-sized hole would be filled with the warmth Natasha brought into his life. He didn’t want to forget Riley, but warm he could use.

So yeah, he got why Steve got stupid over Barnes. He thought he should have kicked his ass to the curb years ago, but he got how the One always got a pass, no matter what.

But damn near suicidal? Wasn’t healthy, man. But loving Bucky Barnes was wired into Steve Rogers’s DNA. He just wasn’t convinced loving Steve Rogers was wired into Bucky Barnes.

Sam had seen too much of it over the years to feel kindly toward the big oaf who stood in the vestibule now, fingers twined with Steve’s, hand clasped around Steve’s bicep as Steve’s other hand clutched his forearm. They peered into the church nervously, eyes scanning over the crowd, the band, the way Connie grooved to the music up at the altar, the way the altar servers cast surreptitious glances toward the Howlies.

No, this church had never seen a wedding quite like this one. And from the puzzled frowns of many of the congregants – likely from Connie’s side of this fiasco – to the blissed out haze of the Howlies in the zone, to the uncertain body language of the grooms to be, this was all new.

This little church with its mid-last-century vibe had certainly never seen a marriage like this one.

Hell, who’d ever seen a marriage like this one? 

Nat chose that moment to turn around and catch his gaze again, jerking her head sideways toward the entrance where Steve and Barnes stood, hesitating. He smiled at Nat, and she grinned back, crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out in that way that made his stomach flip double-time, promising mayhem and magic when they were alone. Then she twisted back to sit properly in her seat with the Bartons, looking forward toward the altar and its awkward-looking priest shifting from foot to foot. Nat leaned in toward Clint and whispered something, and Sam could see Barton’s shoulders shake like he was yukking it up, the bastard. The little fist bump they shared just then only served to make Sam even more nervous. God, Barton and Romanoff. Heaven help him.

His stomach was still focused on acrobatics while his attention drew toward the young priest Barnes had put on the spot, switching up his bride for another groom.

Sam had to give the padre credit – he’d held his ground according to Church doctrine, but he didn’t pass judgment.

He didn’t refuse.

This was really happening.

Yeah. Any opinions he had on the subject, he kept his damned mouth shut. Like always.

Steve deserved happiness. _All_ the happiness. Even if it was with that asshole, Barnes. Guy’d been stringing Steve along for years, fucking his way through a conga line of beautiful women – and the occasional man – while Steve had pined away in silence. To Barnes. Sam had heard his fill of it, no silence between Steve and Sam. 

Barnes hadn’t actually known that Steve was pining. Dumbass white boys with dumbass intimacy and trust issues. The pair of them.

Steve with his oh-so-honorable-don’t-tell-Bucky-or-it-will-change-everything bullshit.

Steve who never dated. Not since they came back. Not much before. Blind dates and set-ups from friends, but never a second date, every potential romance turned into a good friend. Every last one of them. Waiting. For Barnes.

Barnes with his wandering eye and hair-trigger dick. Seemed like Barnes never met anyone he didn’t want to bone. Waiting wasn’t part of Barnes’s vocabulary.

Just how did Connie Rocco tame the wild man of Brooklyn? What made _her_ different?

Huh. Now Sam thought about it, all those women – and those men – had something very specific in common.

Not one of them looked like Steve. If Barnes had a type, it was dark-haired, olive-complected – sometimes of color – and brown-eyed. Maybe green.

Never blue.

Never blond.

Never fair-skinned.

Never a thing like Steve.

Now wasn’t that an interesting observation. Like he’d been avoiding comparison to the real thing.

Like maybe there’d been a hint, a clue, all along. Like maybe Steve wasn’t the only one pining.

Like maybe Barnes wasn’t the asshole Sam thought he was.

Well, maybe, just a little.

Okay, yeah, a lot. But …

Connie looked up and saw them and waved, smiling brightly at the pair as she waggled her fingers in greeting. Sam felt her gaze on him then, signaling it was time to begin. She hurried down the aisle, arms outstretched, as the boys took a tentative step into the nave. She flung her arms around Barnes’s neck and embraced him, planting an open-mouthed kiss on his lips that bore no resemblance to platonic. Steve watched equally open-mouthed, a furrow of worry creasing his brow. 

Sam was halfway to him before he even realized he’d taken a step. He was just about to reach for Steve when Connie let go of Barnes with a loud smack and turned her attention to Steve, hugging him to her and kissing him with the same blistering intensity.

Wait. Was Steve marrying into a three-way? 

No _fucking_ way.

As Connie released Steve and took a step back, she smiled brightly at him, cupping his cheek gently with her hand. “I’m so happy for you,” she breathed, and damn if Sam didn’t believe it. Steve did, too, as he nodded dumbly at her, his mouth slightly open and his expression dazed. Sam slid his arm around Steve’s shoulders to anchor him, because damn, son, Steve was looking shaky all of a sudden.

“Good. I’ll take this one,” she nodded toward Barnes,” if you take Steve,” she told Sam. 

“Take?”

“I’ll give James away, and you can give Steve away. I mean, unless you want someone else, but I know your – well, you don’t have –“ she stumbled on her words, suddenly looking nervous as she frowned at Steve.

Steve seemed to have caught up with the train of thought, and cut her off abruptly. “Sam is fine. Yeah, no one better. Like you said, I don’t have.”

“Great. Ready?” she asked with a sparkle in her eyes.

Steve drew a deep breath – from where he stood with his hand on Steve’s shoulder, Sam could feel the expanse of Steve’s impressive chest filling as he held the breath a beat, two, three, and let it out in a whoosh. “Yeah, I guess –“

“I need a moment. With Barnes,” Sam said suddenly. Barnes had the good grace to look concerned as his gaze shot over to Sam, and Sam jerked his head toward the vestibule. Barnes swallowed hard and followed.

“You hurt him again, I will mess you up. I will _fuck_ you up, understand?”

“Sam, I –“

“I mean it, Barnes. I see him unhappy for any reason connected to you, and I will hurt you.”

“I won’t. I can’t. I love him, Sam –“

“You been doing nothing but hurt him for years, Barnes. You need to open your damn eyes, and use your damn words. Damn stupid ass blind dumb white boy is what you are. You gotta pay attention. He’s worth it, damn it. He’s worth everything. He’s given everything –“

“You in love with him, too Sam?” Barnes asked suddenly, eyes narrowed with suspicion. Tinged green?

Sam barked a rough laugh. “Nah. I don’t swing that way, but if I did, he’d be the one, I guess. After Riley, maybe. But no. Been through hell and back with that sorry ass dude. He deserves the best. You damn well better deliver, Barnes. I’m not the only one who’ll hurt you, you know.”

“I hear you, Wilson. I do. I’m not gonna hurt Steve. I’m gonna love him with everything I got. If he’ll let me.”

“Oh, he’ll let you. There ain’t nothing that boy wouldn’t let you do. It’s an honor and a privilege. Just make sure you don’t fuck it up.”

“I won’t. Now … can I get married now? I been waiting my whole life to love that punk.”

“Yeah, just don’t do it in public. There’s old ladies here. Old men, too. They got delicate sensibilities.”

“Connie’s uncles? Think one of ‘em’s a drag queen, but whatever.” 

The next few minutes are a whirlwind as first Connie takes Barnes down the aisle to the altar, where Dum Dum is rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, his weatherbeaten face creased with a big-ass grin.

Next, Steve and Bucky make their way down the aisle, after a moment of hilarity where Sam offered his arm to Steve and Steve stared at it for a moment before smacking it with the flat of his hand. That’s gonna leave a mark, but at least it got a grin out of the dude. Mission accomplished.

And then they’re nearly at the altar, Barnes grinning like he won the lottery of the century. Maybe he realized that’s exactly what he’d done. Steve smiled tentatively, and Sam could feel the tension seeping back into his shoulders as his footsteps falter, pulling back. Stopping, ten feet from the altar. From Barnes. Nerves. Jitters. Second thoughts?

“C’mon man, you got this,” Sam whispered, voice pitched so only Steve could hear.

“Do I?” Steve replied plaintively. The furrowed expression on his face had Barnes worried now, his expression falling into worry as he watched Steve’s face crumple, close to tears. “I –“

“Steve, buddy, this is what you’ve always wanted, right? Dream come true,” Sam urged, his hand closing over Steve’s elbow, squeezing reassuringly.

“Not like this, not really. I kinda wanted … well, I wanted my friends to be there when I got married.” He glanced around at the people on both sides of the aisle. “I wanted to be surrounded by people who knew me –“

“This wedding’s not binding, remember? You get Barnes to spring for your dream wedding after you get the fucking license. Today, you just gotta stand up there so we can get to the party, right? He has to throw you another when you’re really married. And the team’ll be there, and we will tear a hole in the sky, pal.”

Steve ducked his head and grinned. “Yeah. Yeah, all right.”

And suddenly they were moving again. Suddenly Barnes was breathing again. Suddenly it was really happening.

Dugan clapped his hands together and grinned at Steve as he and Sam stepped into their positions are the altar. Barnes’s hands fluttered and reached toward Steve, but finally settled at his sides when Connie touched him on the arm to quiet him. With one last squeeze to Steve’s arm, Sam took a step back and fell into parade rest, waiting. Hand on the boxes in his pocket.

“Dearly beloved and all that shit, we’re gathered here today to see these two dudes finally get their heads out of their asses and do the deed,” Dugan started, ignoring a, “Language, Mr. Dugan!” from the priest. “It ain’t legal ‘cos they don’t have a license, since Sarge here switched partners at the last minute. This was supposed to be Connie and Sarge’s day, and Connie was kind enough to give her day to Cap here. Ain’t a better man on the planet than Captain Steve Rogers. ‘Cept maybe Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. They deserve each other. And we deserve a party. So, with the power that ain’t vested in me since you don’t have a fucking license, I say go ahead and kiss, and let’s get this party started!”

Steve and Bucky just stare at each other, then look up at Dum Dum.

“What?”

“The rings?” Bucky asks.

“Oh, hell, yeah. You gotta exchange the rings. Wilson?” 

Sam stepped up and handed the boxes to Barnes, who opened one and handed it to Steve, then pocketed the other. He took Steve’s hands in his and stared into his eyes, his face somber yet weirdly aglow.

“I messed up. I was so far into my head feeling sorry for myself, I couldn’t see you. The most important person in my life, for all of my life. For all of my life to come. I love you, Steven Grant Rogers. I wanna grow old with you, Steve. But first I want to build a life with you. I’m with you, baby, til the end of the line.” And he pulled a loose ring from his pocket and held it between thumb and forefinger over Steve’s hand.

“Buck, that’s your Mom’s ring!”

“Yeah, we’ll have it resized later, but she always thought of you as a son, so it made sense that you should have her ring. Becks will understand,” he added, glancing out toward the audience where his sister sat with her boyfriend.

“I do, Buck!” she called out, and everyone chuckled.

“With this ring, I thee wed,” Barnes said softly, slipping the ring onto the first knuckle, and then gasped as it continued to slide onto Steve’s finger. He had big hands, but his fingers were long and slender, artist’s hands. And damn if the ring didn’t fit, a little snug maybe, a moment’s push to get it all the way on, but it fit. Steve lifted his face toward Barnes and the smile he favored him with could only be called beatific. He fucking glowed with emotion.

“Cap, you take this sorry sonuvabitch to be your unlawfully married husband?” Dugan asked with a chuckle, enjoying his own joke. More than anyone else was, actually.

“I do,” Steve breathed. Sam’s own breath caught at the adoration held in those two simple words. He wondered briefly if anyone would ever say words to him with the same pure emotion. Without realizing it, he glanced out toward Nat, caught her eye for a moment, and smiled. Then felt the lurching sensation of ground falling away as he realized what he’d just done.

Sam was gonna have to start saving his pennies for an engagement ring of his own.

Damn his life.

And didn’t that just make his heart feel like soaring?

“What about you, Sarge?”

“Don’t I have to say some vows first?” Steve interrupted.

“Knock your socks off, Cap,” Dugan invited.

“Bucky, you’re my best friend. Sorry, Sam,” he called over his shoulder with a grin. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love you with all my heart. I was born to love you. And now I finally have the chance. Til the end of the line. Til the end of the universe. Til the stars burn out. I’m with you.”

He fumbled with the box, and Sam had to step in to help his trembling fingers open the box and extract the ring. Steve smiled gratefully at him, then reached out and took Barnes’s hand in his. “With this ring, I thee _you_ wed.”

“That’s not even a sentence,” Barnes grumbled, and Dugan simply guffawed.

“Do you take Cap to be your unlawfully wedded husband, Sarge?”

“You bet your ass I do,” Barnes breathed, crowding toward Steve.

Just then, Dugan’s beefy hands shot out and snagged both men by the napes of their necks and smushed them together. _“Now, kiss!”_ he commanded.

&&&


	8. Jim Morita

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, plans have to be changed, schedules rearranged, it's all a mess when the groom and bride decide the wedding should be a groom and groom. Plus, reality rears its ugly head and it doesn't play well with these two idiot boys.

Sarge had managed to make the sweetness of marrying Cap something filthy after all, turning that first kiss into a show that had all the straights in the audience shifting uncomfortably in their seats, and murmuring amongst themselves how disrespectful Sarge was for dumping Connie and taking up with – gasp! – another man! And then trying to crawl into his intestines by way of his throat. 

The priest about had a stroke he was so purple freaking out over Barnes and Rogers playing tonsil hockey at the altar while Dugan swore up a storm. A shitstorm.

Jim Morita thought it was the funniest thing he’d seen in a fuckin’ long time. 

And he fuckin’ figured they all deserved funny. Even better when it was shared with Cap.

Bein’ as they none of them would fuckin’ be here – be fucking _anywhere_ – if it wasn’t for Cap.

Any one of the Howlies would march grinning into Hell right behind Sarge. Hell. Yeah, been there, done that. No grinnin’ involved, just a straight up capture by a splinter terrorist cell who wanted to make a splash on the world stage. Capture an American unit in Afghanistan, beat the crap out of ‘em, and broadcast it over the Internet, instant virgins in heaven, right? 

Yeah, not so much. Those idiot insurgents hadn’t banked on the batshit crazy mad scientist they’d picked up on the way. PhDs and medical degrees up the ass, and the creepy-as- _fuck_ little dude with the Coke-bottle lenses thought he was Victor von Frankenstein, and Sarge was his creature.

Jim still heard Sarge screaming in the night. Heard his hiccupping sobs, his guttural curses, his incoherent refusals. It’s why he drove himself into music, into the group. Why he’d suggested they form a band in the first place. When the music played, the memory fell silent. He couldn’t hear the echoes of Sarge’s torture when the music played. The moment he’d discovered that was the moment he’d taken hold of his sanity again.

But as much as he’d follow Sarge into Hell, _had_ followed him, he’d follow Cap even further.

The guys had all known about Sarge’s buddy Steve. Sarge may have thought no one could tell, but every one of them knew that Sarge had it bad for his childhood pal. Steve this and Rogers that and my punk-ass friend is so all that. Might as well’ve been sayin’, “Oh my pal, I love him so,” for all the good it did him.

So it wasn’t surprising that when Sarge was left to whimper pathetically in his cell, his wounds uncared for, his lean body etching away to starved and skeletal, his eyes wild and glazed from the drugs Zola pumped into him, that he’d muttered about how grateful he was that Steve would never see him there, would never experience the horror and the degradation. Steve, safe and whole somewhere else, somewhere not in combat, desk job with three squares, a soft bed, and running water. That’s what got Sarge through the pain. Gave him reason to open his eyes again each day, raise his head and spit in Zola’s eye. His Steve was clear of all that shit.

And it wasn’t surprising that the one person in the world who wouldn’t sit back and let Sarge dissolve away in a vat of his own piss and pain would be Steve. Captain Steve Rogers. Captain America and his covert ops squad, but mostly just Steve in the long run. He broke orders, broke regs, broke laws of God and man to claw his way across Afghanistan to find Sarge and, by luck, the rest of their unit.

Like Orpheus, he’d descended into Hell, and he’d carried his Eurydice to the surface and the sun. Literally. 

Barton took out two of their guards with two immaculately targeted arrows, for fuck’s sake. He was a master! Then Cap slipped silently into the compound, Wilson on his six. They later learned that the rest of the team was fanned out around the neighborhood, at ground level and up above the streets, covering the rescue, but there’d been nothing to hint that something was about to go down.

Which is why it was a surprise when one of their captors strolled into the room where he and the guys were held, and found himself face to face with Cap. His reaction was immediate and violent. Insurgent asshole tore a hole out of Cap’s thigh with a semi-automatic barrage just seconds before Monty tore a hole out of the insurgent’s trachea with a well-placed knife. But Cap had been bleeding pretty bad when he’d ripped a couple of strips off his own uniform to tie off a fast field tourniquet on himself before he’d hurried down the hallway toward where they could all hear Sarge yelling. There’d been a short burst of gunfire and a sickening thud. Jim had felt a wild sense of elation at the thought that Zola might be dead, and he found his feet pulling him toward Zola’s room of horrors. It was all he could do to bottle up the gleeful laughter that wanted to claw its way up his throat, laughter at the sight of the dead eyes behind those ridiculous lenses. A scalpel, its gleaming blade bathed in thick, dark blood, lay a few inches from his still hand. 

Jim had looked up then, saw the line of blood on Sarge’s neck, and surged forward, letting his training kick it. Pressure on the wound, a quick field dressing to stanch the blood flow, and an even quicker looksee over Sarge to catalogue the worst of his injuries, and he’d nodded to Cap. That was all the signal he needed – h’d hauled Sarge out like a sack of potatoes. By then, Cap’s team had been laying down shielding fire while the rest of the team hauled their sorry butts out of the compound. Other captives were freed – an aide worker they hadn’t even known was there, a local opposition leader and his teenaged son. A couple of other civilians. 

Wilson’s buddy Riley took a hit and went down, crashing into a nearby building, so Monty and Dernier had peeled off to recover him while the enemy was in disarray. They’d found him in the melee, multiple wounds including a shot clean through the heart – they’d at least been able to tell Cap and Wilson he’d died instantly, no painful bleed out, no torture like Sarge. But Cap and Wilson had both taken it hard. Hell, all of them did – the guy’d been in the air to cover their escape like an avenging angel, and he hadn’t made it out. The guys made sure they at least brought his body out even if it did slow ‘em down. So his family would have something to bury. Turned out that family was his unit, and there was no shortage of willing hands to carry the burden.

There’d been a real sense of satisfaction when Dernier’d detonated a makeshift bomb he’d cobbled together in his few minutes of freedom. He’d been squirreling away bits and bobs, components to build the bomb. Subdued by the loss of Riley, Dernier still couldn’t contain his childlike delight as the bomb blossomed outward, pushing the walls of their captivity so far they couldn’t stretch any further. The compound had collapsed in on itself as gouts of flame in strange colors erupted from the areas where Zola’d kept his labs. And deeper into the compound, successive explosions betrayed where their kidnappers had stockpiled additional weapons.

It had been a good sight, the flames and the smoke and the destruction. When nightmares haunted him, of the time they spent there, of Riley tumbling from the sky, of Sarge battered and misshapen from the beatings and the experiments, Jim clung to the memory of the dancing flames, the skirls of smoke billowing skyward. It made him feel cleansed in holy fire. Not that he’d ever tell Dernier he felt that way. Fucker was way too enamored of his booms as it was.

The rest of them all had made it out that day, Cap taking the biggest hit, but he’d just gritted his teeth and ignored the fact his uniform was soaked in his own blood and his leg was a torn up mess. All that mattered had been Sarge. So, honestly, they were just a fucking matched set, weren’t they? Then and now. Probably forever. Geeze. 

As for Wilson, it had been clear he was hurting – hell, Jim knew he was hurting still, and he knew that Wilson had a no good, rotten day every year on the anniversary and a lot of the days in between. But he’d focused on Cap, and that had given him something to keep his mind and his weapon occupied. Jim knew that there was always something special about the friendship between Cap and Sarge. But the friendship between Cap and Wilson was just as fiercely protective, especially after they lost Riley.

It had been tough relinquishing Sarge to the medics as they were all debriefed and treated for their own injuries. But Sarge had been in a really bad way, there’d been a chance he might not make it, and no one knew what withdrawal from the crap Zola had pumped him up with would do.

Sarge had been out of it for weeks after, and had been air-lifted to Germany for treatment and recovery. Cap had followed on a disciplinary leave, pending review of the case. Remanded for trial. Seems those regs he broke? Yeah, big brass wasn’t sure if they were gonna pin another medal on his chest, or toss his ass in military prison. At least he got the chance to pine away at Sarge’s bedside while he recovered, even if Sarge was in a medically-induced coma the whole time. Wilson was there as much as he was able, as were the guys, and the other members of Cap’s squad. 

No way would any of them be alive today if Captain Steven Grant Rogers hadn’t defied orders and single-handedly tracked them down and broken into the insurgent compound. Okay, maybe not single-handedly – he had a hell of a team, with intel and tech support, a crack sniper, air and ground support from his EX-7s, and a driver as like to be on the Formula 1 circuit as serving in the military. But Cap had been tentative about his answers – if there were rewards to be had, he’d claim the grand support of his team, but if there was punishment, he was taking all the blame on himself. His team? They’d’a followed him anywhere for anything and been happy to do it. Hell, that’s exactly what they’d done.

Brass’d finally got their heads on straight after he and the rest of the squad gave their statements. Cap’s team was cleared, and commendations given where they belonged.

Sarge’s team checked out and were given some R&R to decide what they wanted to do next. Jim wanted to go home, back to Fresno and his folks. No one wanted back in the game. But they’d all agreed they’d wait to find out what Sarge was doing. No way were they leaving him on his lonesome in the middle of fucking Europe, and even less if he redeployed back to the stinkin’ Middle East.

By the time Sarge finally came out from under all the meds and drugs, Cap had been cleared and redeployed, leaving orders behind that under no circumstances were they to reveal Cap’s role in the mission to Sarge. Cap didn’t want Sarge to know.

So, the guys took turns sitting at Sarge’s bedside until he woke up, and after, spent hours cheating at card games, telling raunchy jokes, reading nerdy scifi aloud to him, and finding porn online for Sarge to complain over.

If it weren’t for the men and women around them in the military hospital who were so damaged by war they’d never be the same again, it might have actually been pretty fucking awesome, as tours went.

Sarge had wanted to know all about the rescue, every last detail. Jim and the guys claimed orders when they dodged Sarge’s questions, and he supposed that was true – Cap was a ranking officer, and he’d asked them not to let Sarge know about his involvement. No one really understood why, but Cap insisted. Sure, the adventures of “Captain America” were sorta classified, but this was _Sarge_ , Cap’s best friend. But Cap insisted, and the guys went along with it.

But it was really fucking hard to keep quiet when Sarge started talking about sucking the dick of the man who rescued him. You know, knowing how Cap probably would have liked that. Like, a lot. And maybe wanted to return the favor. Like, a lot, a lot.

‘Cos, you know, everybody could see that Cap had it just as bad for Sarge. And his head was just as far up his ass as Sarge’s.

And Sarge talked about sucking that dick. Way more than anyone wanted to hear about it. Because he was grateful and shit.

Yeah, it was annoying and kinda sweet all at the same time. Mostly annoying. Especially the dick suckage talk. But the heads up the ass stuff, too.

Yet, here they all were. At the reception of Sarge and Cap’s fake wedding officiated over by none other than Dum Dum Fucking Dugan. 

Could it get any weirder than that?

Well, yeah. The guys were supposed to do a musical number at the reception, something sweet and sugary for Connie. But that wasn’t gonna fit Cap. Not that any of them were going to pass judgment on Cap’s ABBA collection. Because, well. _Dancing Queen_. ’Nuff said.

So the guys had been arguing for a solid ten minutes over what to perform for Cap and Sarge when Morita had the best idea ever. Seriously, ever.

He burped.

Four pairs of eyes swiveled toward him, and he grinned toothily. And burped again, a few notes higher.

Then he burped a whole line, and eyebrows shot up, grins were exchanged, and the five of them took off for the men’s room where they could practice.

&&&

In the end, burping the _Hallelujah Chorus_ may not have been one of their most inspired musical interludes, but it was fun and outrageous, and Cap loved it. He did that full body laugh where he grabbed his own left boob, tipped his head back like he was trying to catch the rain, and he just howled.

All in all, pretty fucking awesome. Jim had come to terms with the fact that the boring old straights who must be Connie’s side of the family were never going to get him. And he didn’t care. Having Cap laugh and clap for them? Yeah, that was something worth having.

Speeches are generally pretty boring, but thankfully Wilson – Falcon – knew how to tell a joke, how to say something that was embarrassing but heartfelt, and knew when to shut up. Everything was going great at the reception, folks were laughing and eating and having a good time. Sarge and Cap looked happier than anyone outside of a porno that Jim had ever seen. The band was going to start playing again soon so they could have their first dance as not-really-marrieds. Jim thought they should play a polka just to be annoying.

And then the Colonel stood up and raised his glass to the not-yet-newlyweds.

“I’m not at all surprised to see these two idiots finally get hitched. Been waiting for something like this to happen ever since Rogers disobeyed several direct orders, commandeering classified military equipment, and risked an international incident, not to mention the lives of his men, to infiltrate behind enemy lines in order to rescue Barnes’s sorry ass from an insurgent stronghold where he and his squad had been taken prisoner. There was no way that Rogers was going to let Barnes suffer a minute longer than absolutely necessary. And if that ain’t love, I don’t know what is. I knew that day that there was something special about the friendship of Rogers and Barnes. You don’t do what Rogers did for just any old friendship. You risk it all because to not risk it all is unacceptable.

“As missions go, it was a success. We lost a good man that day, God rest Staff Sergeant Andrew Riley’s soul,” he added, with a faint nod in Wilson’s direction, and a lift of his glass that Wilson returned solemnly. “Uexplained explosives took out the insurgent stronghold and a lot of insurgents themselves, with no civilian casualties and minimal injuries on our side – mostly to Steve, there, I might add. If it hadn’t been for Captain Steven Grant Rogers – for _Captain America_ – we certainly wouldn’t be here today. And that’s why when he faced disciplinary action, it was decided not to prosecute. Rogers got another piece of jewelry to wear when he gets dolled up in uniform,” Philips added with a craggy grin. Or maybe it was constipation. It was hard to tell with him. “And today he gets an even better one. So, congratulations Captain, Sergeant. Try to keep your heads out of your asses in future, hmm?” he concluded, raising his glass high. “To Rogers and Barnes.”

It might have been hard to tell if Philips was smiling or in need of a shit, but it wasn’t hard to tell what was going on with Sarge, though. He looked like he was fit to blow, face purpling with rage as he bend the fucking fork he was folding in half.

“Steve? We need to talk. In private. _Now_.”

As florid at Sarge was, Cap was pale. 

Fan, meet shit.


	9. A Fly on the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So ... Words are spoken. Not necessarily the right words, but they're shared out loud. Not the best idea these two idiots have ever had.

“Seriously, Steve? Captain _Fucking_ America?”

Steve drew his shoulders back stiffly, his face an impassive mask as he replied simply, “I can neither confirm or deny that allegation.” Bucky had grabbed Steve by the arm and dragged him into a small conference room down the hallway from the reception, away from prying eyes and unwanted listeners, whether intentional or accidental. The looks on the faces of the Howlies, of Wilson, even Nat had been stricken. Philips looked like he was going to have a stroke.

“Are you fucking shitting me? Secrets, really? I’m your husband –“

“The identity of Captain America is classified. Need to know,” Steve interrupted, his voice clipped, his face tight. His whole body was bowstring taut.

“I need to know.”

“Not according to Central Command.”

“The guys, they know, right? They saw you. They were _there_. Philips already spilled the beans –“

“I can neither confirm nor deny. I’m sorry, Buck.”

“The things that he’s said to have done. Captain America. Captain _fucking_ America, Steve!. Jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Throwing himself on a grenade. Taking down a nest of insurgents single-handedly. Practically getting his leg shot off, but still carrying a prisoner of war to safety. Me. You weren’t riding a desk in an Embassy detail were you? All those times you couldn’t meet up with me on leave you weren’t stuck showing a VIP around, you were on assignment!”

“I can neither confir –“

“Fuck you! Stop lying to me! I shoulda known it was you. No one else is as stupidly lacking in self-preservation skills. And I’ve seen the scars. Something nearly sheered your damn leg off. You gonna tell me it _wasn’t_ gunfire?”

Steve just looked at him, his eyes haunted, jaw coiled so tightly he might just break his teeth. 

“You told me you were deployed to a cushy security detail in one of the friendly countries. Embassy work, attache or something. Safe, behind a desk. You _lied_ , Steve. You lied to me, you took risks, you could’ve been killed! Why –”

“I’m good at my job, Buck. My _classified_ job. Just like you were. I don’t know the details of every mission you and the Howlies were sent on. And my security clearance is higher than yours. They send us where they need us, we make a difference when and where we can.”

“Until we can’t.”

“I’m glad you took the medical, Buck. What they did to you … nobody should have to go through that, and you survived it. And look at the progress you’ve made. The way you rebuilt your life. You beat the bastards. You fucking survived, and I’m so proud of you. But I’m sorry, Buck. My location … my locations, my missions are always classified. My unit is classified. And I didn’t want you to worry, so I –“

“Told me what I wanted to hear? What I wanted to hear was that my best friend was safe and that he loved me. I didn’t just want to hear that, Steve – I wanted him – you – to _be_ safe! ”

“That’s what I wanted, too, Buck. It’s why …” Steve paused, taking a deep, shuddering breath, “it’s when they told me they weren’t sending in a unit to get you guys out, I went a little crazy. The idea that you might not come back … well, yeah. I couldn’t take that.”

“You hadda be on the front line to know that, Steve. That’s not Embassy chatter, that’s front line intel. 

‘S’classified. Jesus, Buck. You askin’ me to commit treason here?”

“Philips already did. And I’m going to be your husband. I have a right to know.”

“You have a right to know. Okay. You have a right to know that I am not telling you shit. It’s done, it’s in the past. We made it through, we’re here. We’re gonna get married. Why can’t that be enough?”

“Because you put yourself in harm’s way when you told me you were safe, riding a desk. You were –“

“Doing the job that needed doing! Doing something no one else could, okay? And I am good at it. You’re living proof of that.”

“Hah, so you admit you really are Captain America!”

Steve just glared at Bucky for a long time, then shook his head in defeat. “It’s a stupid name. Captain America doesn’t exist, he’s a fairytale.” It was as much of an admission as he was going to make. 

“And the grenade?”

“Was a dummy. Obviously.”

“Did you know that when you flung yourself on top of it?”

Steve was silent again.

“Yeah, thought so. Let me guess – you were going to contain the blast with your rock-hard abs.”

Steve glared a little harder.

“If it was real, you’d be chum. You’d be a fucking _smear_. How is that a good idea?”

“If it was real, my body would have taken most of the blast and contained a lot of the shrapnel. It would have saved lives.”

“And that’s it, isn’t it. Every life is worth more than yours.”

“People’s lives matter, Buck. Not my place to decide who lives or dies.”

“You decide it’s okay if you do. Die, I mean. Y’can’t do that, Steve. You don’t have the right to put your life on the line. Not if we’re gonna be married. For real, legal married.”

“I work as an artist these days, Buck. Not much opportunity to throw myself on grenades.”

“Yeah? How about that mugging over on Forest, huh? You didn’t hesitate to put yourself in the path of a fucking bullet, punk.”

“I’m not about to let some defenseless elderly man get killed for a few bucks. Not on my watch.”

“And there it is. Your watch. You’re not on duty, dammit. You got a hero complex. No, not a hero. A martyr. Gotta give yourself up to the cause. Whatever cause it is. Every cause, maybe.”

“Some causes are worth it,” Steve replied stubbornly.

“Name one.”

“You.”

“Me.”

“You. You know how every year, Sam crawls into a bottle and doesn’t come out for a couple of days?”

“Mourning his buddy Riley. Yeah, I know. It’s hell losing a member of your team. Even worse when they’ve become a friend.”

“Yeah. It kills him. I don’t think you kept much track of time when those insurgents had you and the guys, but …”

“Oh fuck. Oh shit – Riley was killed during the rescue?”

“Enemy fire knocked him right out of the sky. He was a good guy, the best. Sam’s best friend since they were in pre-school. Like you’n’me, only they got lucky and got to serve together. Watched each other’s backs. Always had each other when the going got rough. Until that mission.”

“No wonder Sam hates me. I’m responsible for the death of his best friend.”

“No, Sam hates you for a completely different reason. He doesn’t really blame you for Riley’s death, he doesn’t even blame me for mounting the mission. He blames the right people, the enemy combatants who fired the weapons that shot out Riley’s jet back and took out his heart. It’s a blessing, but Riley died instantly – he might have been dead before he crash landed. No, that’s not what I’m getting at.”

“Then what?”

“I lost a good man that day, one of my own. We rescued your team, but with God as my witness, the only reason we were there was for you. I’d’a walked through Hellfire and back to get you out. And I have to live with the fact that if I had to do it all over again, knowing that Riley would die while I was carrying you out of that compound on my shoulders, I would gladly sacrifice him to have you back. So don’t tell me I take crazy risks. I’d take any risk for you, Buck. _Any_.”

“That’s crazy, Steve. I know you – you wouldn’t –“

“Sacrifice someone else for you? I would. I _would_ , Buck. I did. That’s how much you mean to me. But don’t ask me to be something I’m not. Don’t ask me to … to just let it slide. I can’t do that. I’ll never be the guy to ride the desk while others are risking it all.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked quietly.

“I told you, it was classified.”

“I might have come out of it while you were there, you’d’a had to tell me something. My whole team saw you, it’s in the formal record. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I told you –“

“Don’t give me that bullshit. That’s not why. Why would you think keeping secrets is okay, Steve? What else aren’t you telling me?”

“Is that it? You think I’m keeping stuff from you? What? You can’t trust me?”

“You tell me. Explain to me how I trust you when you got secrets, secrets you won’t share. You can’t even be honest with me now. Your cover’s blown, and you still won’t tell me the truth, not the whole truth. So what else aren’t you telling me? What else can’t I –“

“Can’t you trust me over,” Steve finished in a lifeless monotone. He stared at Bucky for a long moment, mouth slightly open, but holding his breath. His face was still, not serene, but still, on hold. Pending. Finally, the space between his eyebrows scrunched together for a split second, his eyes full of pain. And then he nodded.

“I came out to you when we were in middle school, Buck. We were thirteen. You knew all about how I liked guys, how I liked girls. You never said anything about who you liked. So how come I found out you liked guys when my first real boyfriend told me I gave head better ‘n’ you? My boyfriend in sophomore year of _high school_? My boyfriend I introduced you to, and you never said a word, never gave a hint you knew him? And how come you didn’t tell me you liked both until after Afghanistan? After you were discharged?”

“I –“

“Don’t accuse me of keeping secrets, of not being trustworthy, when you haven’t been honest with me, either, Buck.”

“That’s different. I didn’t know how I felt. That thing with Brock – “

“He said you guys were together for months. _Months_ , Buck. And you never said. Most of freshman year, he said. Through the summer – the summer you told me you had a job at Hanrahan’s Tires. You were sneakin’ off to see _him_. Handjobs under the bleachers, you on your knees in a broom closet between classes. Grinding in the locker room. All the way, even. I heard all about it. _All_ about it. Every fucking detail. All the time. Til I finally broke up with him, ‘cos it was clear he was only with me ‘cos he wanted you back. Brock figured he got me hot and bothered enough, I’d agree to a three-way with him – you, me and him. And then he’d dump me and keep you. And you … you couldn’t even be honest with me. Fucked me up, it really did. Broke my heart. Only I couldn’t talk to you about it ‘cos you’d never told me. I couldn’t talk about the biggest hurt in my life with my best friend because my best friend was keeping secrets from me. He was part of the hurt. The biggest part. It wasn’t nothin’. It was important, Buck. It was everything. You were. You are.”

Steve stopped and looked solemnly into Bucky’s eyes. “Tell me how that’s any different, Buck.”

“I did have a job at Hanrahan’s,” Bucky protested, but wilted under Steve’s basilisk glare. “Got fired after a week for missin’ too much work. ‘Cos of … you know,“ Bucky ducked his head, embarrassed.

“Brock was a greedy sonovabitch,” Steve prompted flatly.

Bucky nodded. “Fucking insatiable. After we were done – and he dumped me, Steve, I don’t know why he’d want me back more’n you – I swore off guys for years. Seriously, I was strictly into girls after that. He fucked me up, too, Steve.”

“But you never said. I was your best friend, and you never said. ”

“I was embarrassed, I guess. DIdn’t want you to know how bad I fucked up. Didn’t want you to think less of me, too. If it was so important … why didn’t you say something, then? Call me on my shit?”

“Figured you had a reason to keep a secret. And I respected that. Figured you’d tell me when you were ready. Only. Yeah. You were never ready.”

“Not the same,” Bucky protested, but the protest was weak. “Screwing with some douchebag as a teenager is not the same as taking risks with your life against people with real weapons and long-range missiles.”

“My life to risk. For the right reasons. Didn’t want you worrying. You had no claim on me. You never said. You never let me in on your secret. I might’ve … if I’d known there was a chance, I might have … But you never said.”

“Neither did you.”

“No. No, I didn’t,” Steve admitted, turning away, running a shaky hand through his hair. “And I didn’t want you to look at me different if you knew. Knew I’d saved your life. I was doing my job, but I was also selfish. I couldn’t let those bastards have you. I’m selfish like that. But I didn’t want you to feel obligated. Especially not after the guys told me what you were sayin’ about Captain America.”

“Wha –“ 

“How bad you wanted to suck his dick, Buck. You wouldn’t shut up about it. And then when I came back to help you through rehab, you were like a broken fucking record, asking everyone who he was, how you could find him, what you wanted to do to him. How was I supposed to admit I was Cap when all you could talk about was swallowing him down?”

“I’d’a –“

“Sucked my dick, yeah. And I never would’ve known whether you meant it or not. For me. Just for Captain America. That would’ve always stood between us.”

“Didn’t have to. Doesn’t.”

Steve cocked his head to the side and regarded Bucky sadly. “Already is.”

“Steve –“

“Guess it’s good we got this out in the open now. And good thing this wasn’t real, huh? ‘Cos you don’t want to be married to someone you can’t trust. ‘Cos God forbid we’re honest with each other. We’ve told each other so many lies, kept so many secrets, I’m not sure we’re even friends. Not sure we ever were.”

The fight, the life, seemed to drain right out of Steve as his shoulders slumped and he shook his head. His sighing exhale had a tinge of finality to it. 

Bucky reached out a hand, fingers splayed, toward Steve’s arm, let his hand hover for a second and then dropped it. “Steve, you can’t –“

“That’s it, Buck. I can’t. I … I love you Buck, but I. I just can’t.” 

He shook his head sadly and spun on his heel, and before Bucky could even react, he was gone, out of the room, and the door snicked shut quietly behind him, but the tiny sound seemed to echo in Bucky’s head, rolling around and building momentum like the bong of the big iron bells in the tower, thrumming and gaining energy until all Bucky knew was the wall of sound that was his brain.

What the fuck just happened?

What the hell had he done?

And why was he still standing there?

He lunged for the door, only to have it swing open, revealing a grim-faced Natasha, holding her hand up peremptorily toward him.

“James. Stay. Let him go.”

&&&


	10. Joe Rocco

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another point of view, and someone who hasn't chosen a side. Sometimes, that's the thing you need most when loved ones disagree. A friend.

Connie patted Joe’s hand reassuringly and smiled a watery smile at him. He could feel the tension, the worry, rising in her as the boys made their way out of the reception hall. “It’s gonna be okay,” she assured him, but as his eyes tracked their progress, he could see the tension in Bucky’s posture, the fight building in Steve’s. 

“No, baby, I don’t think it is,” he said softly, shifting his hand to take her fingers and squeeze them warmly. “Those boys have more shit to work out than they can tackle in a single day.”

Connie simply stopped, her mouth dropping open to stare at him, dumbfounded.

He turned to her and grinned. “Think I never noticed how they look at each other? Think they never told me? They talk to me like I’m already gone some days. Not mean, but I sit there and I don’t say anything, and they just talk. Old intelligence trick – let your mark talk themselves out. I know more secrets about those two boys than they’ll ever share with each other.” He chuckled to himself, glancing toward the door that closed decisively behind the pair of them. “He’d’a made you happy, in his own way, you know. As long as you didn’t pin him down, make him commit to you and only you, you’d’a been happy together. That boy doesn’t know what he wants.”

“Dad!” Connie gasped, smacking her hand against his, then clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide and mortified. “Oh, Daddy, I’m so sorry –“

“Conn, your old man’s not made of glass. Not all the time anyway. I know you worry about me. I’m sorry. Your Mom … well, your Mom, God rest her soul, she was special. And you’ll be special to the right person. Buck, well, I don’t doubt he loves you, baby, but he’s not the right person – your _right_ person. He’d’a been good to you, taken care of you, and been there when you needed him. But his eyes would’ve always been on the horizon, looking for that something better to come along. You’re better. You’re the best. And you need someone who sees that.”

Connie’s hand slid warm and comforting over his own, curled into his palm and held fast. Like the anchor she was, keeping him tethered to the present, to the now. He laid his other hand over hers and pressed affectionately. He didn’t have many days where everything was so clear, so calm. So quiet in his head. He smiled at her, leaned toward her and pressed his lips lightly against her temple, felt the softness of her hair brush against his cheek, the subtle scent of her perfume tickle at his nose.

She laid her head on his shoulder, like she did when she was a little girl. It made him feel strong and powerful, and oddly safe. He smiled.

“So you’re okay with this, me not marrying James?”

“Are you?”

“Yeah, yeah I am. I was more worried about you – James and Steve are so important –“

“They’re good friends, yes. But I think you’re going to have to face losing one of them.”

“Dad –“

“You saw Bucky’s face, when his old CO announced what Steve had done. Steve’s a hero, but that mission cuts him up inside. All his missions. He’s good at what does, baby, but what he does doesn’t make him feel good. I think he needed that to be separate from Bucky, that’s why he kept it quiet. But you know Bucky – he doesn’t like to be left out.”

“Steve told you about it.”

Joe nodded sadly. He’d heard Steve talk in faltering words, emotion choking him as he recounted his experiences, his missions, the fear and the pain and the shakes and the nightmares that were still his constant companions. Somehow hearing that Steve Rogers, sweet, calm, strong, artistic Steve, lived through that and still carried the scars, yet still carried on, that helped Joe. It helped to give him a little more strength to take another step, live another day, wake up another morning. Watch the light in his daughter’s eyes and recognize that he was one of the lucky ones. He came home, and he had a home to return to, had a home that still wanted him.

“Yeah. It wasn’t easy. And it’s not going to be easy for Bucky to accept that he never talked to him about what happened, but I think – no, I believe – that Steve needed that. He needed Bucky to not look at him different, not see him as damaged or broken. He needed to be whole in Bucky’s eyes.”

“You think that’s what James is going to do? He loves Steve, he’s loved him all his life –“

“He loves the idea of Steve. He’s got Steve on a pedestal, and people just don’t live there. Steve’s a real guy, he farts, he shits, he makes mistakes. Bucky thinks the sun shines out his ass, and that ain’t practical. ‘Specially for two guys to, well, you know. No, don’t tell me you know, I don’t want to – _shit_ ,” he interrupted himself, feeling anxiety crawling under his skin, cold rippling under his flesh at the same time embarrassment heated his face. He turned toward Connie in rising panic, only to find her watching him expectantly, calmly. She smiled and drew a slow steady breath, let it out, held his eyes, and did it again. After a moment, he matched her careful breathing, and felt the apprehension begin to drain away. He smiled at her, tentative and grateful at the same time. Nodding to himself, he picked up the thread again, “Anyway, if he really loved Steve, he’d’ve paid more attention to Steve, and seen how he felt. Showed how he felt about Steve. Honey, that’s a marriage that’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.”

Connie’s eyes strayed toward that closed door, brows drawn up in worry. “I don’t want to see either of them unhappy –“

“Baby, they’ve both been lying to each other and themselves pretty much their whole lives. They’ve got shit to work through. That takes time. And talk. I believe they’ll make it in the end, but right now? I’m betting Steve comes storming out any second now. He’s not going to accept Bucky’s shit, not about this. And you know Bucky – he doesn’t back down easy, either.”

As one, they turned toward the closed door, Connie’s free hand sliding up to rest comfortingly on Joe’s forearm.

“You think they’ll be able to work it out?” she breathed worriedly in his ear. 

He grinned. “If there’s a God, they damn well better. They’re both gonna need friends, Conn. You can be the best friend you can be if you don’t choose sides.”

She pursed her lips, but the corners of her mouth tilted upward in a small smile. She nodded. And her eyes widened at the sound of a sharply slammed door.

“Right on schedule,” Joe whispered, shaking his head.

“Daddy, how’d you know?”

“My old line of work, I had to know people. And I’ve had a chance to get to know these two,” he answered, feeling a little sad at the same time a thrill of vindication sang through his veins. He still had it, if he cared to use it.

Her fingers tightened around his arm as Steve was greeted by an anxious Wilson and his girl, that Russian-sounding name. Roman-something. Romanoff. Almost like the old tsars. As Wilson and Steve spoke, she glanced from one to the other, then threaded her fingers with Steve’s and stood up on tiptoe – on pointe – and kissed him on the cheek. Then she was walking purposefully toward the room where Steve had left Bucky.

“Steve looks wrecked,” Connie whispered. “I should go to him –“

He tightened his hold on her hand and shook his head. “Wilson will take care of it. Sam’s a good guy, and he knows how to work with … well, with old soldiers like us. He’ll take care of Steve. And his girl – I think she’ll take care of Bucky. At least she’ll try. He’s got a lot of work to do, that boy. Starting with getting his head out of his ass. He pulls that off, the rest is easy. Relatively.“

&&&

It didn’t take long for Wilson to organize getting Steve out of there, brushing past well-wishers and half-sloshed friends alike. There’d been a frosty pause with Colonel Philips, and Joe knew that the crusty old colonel had probably done a shit-ton’s worth of damage to his friendship with both boys with his bomb drop. Steve shook his head and pushed past him, while Wilson tossed a dagger-filled glance over his shoulder in passing. Philips had the good grace to look ashamed and remorseful, and slunk back to his table to drown his sorrows in cash bar booze.

Watching it all, Joe felt a pang of sadness for the boy. He’d always known how Steve felt about Bucky, but it had never been his secret to share that Bucky loved him back. And he knew that Steve had never wished Connie ill, would never have stood in Connie’s way. As long as Bucky couldn’t face up to the enormity of his feelings for Steve, the soul-deep need he had for his best friend, there was nothing Joe could do to make it easier for Steve, and he’d never do anything to hurt his baby girl. Truth was, the pair of them were idiots, but they were idiots in love. They just had to get past Bucky’s self-destructive tendencies in the relationship department, and Steve’s need for secrecy. Easy peasy.

Truth was, he wasn’t sure how it would have worked with Connie, but when his daughter had admitted that she wasn’t looking for a physical relationship with anyone, and that Bucky would be free to pursue other partners, he knew that the marriage would’ve worked in a weird kind of way. Except for the hole in Bucky’s soul, and the ache in Steve’s. But Connie would’ve been happy.

A few minutes after Wilson ushered Steve out of the reception, Wilson’s girlfriend came out of the room, and her whole body was bowstring taut, her mouth an angry, tight slash across her pretty face. Around them, everyone pointedly did not look at the doorway where Steve had come through, that Bucky was still behind. Hiding? Regrouping? Mourning? Or bracing for action?

Joe grimaced. Everyone was taking it out on Bucky. Bucky wasn’t the bad guy here. There was no bad guy. He just needed some guidance, someone on his side so he could start to find his way clear.

Yeah.

Joe drew a deep breath and sat up straight.

He’d been too long without a mission.

Bucky and Steve had both been kind to him, friends beyond the limits of Bucky’s involvement with Connie. These two didn’t need a matchmaker, and they didn’t need anyone else interfering. But they could each use a friend. Steve had Wilson. Bucky would have to make due with him.

He disentangled himself from Connie’s desperate grip and smiled at her. “Gonna check on Bucky. Go, mingle, have a nice time. This was supposed to be your day. There’s no reason why you can’t enjoy it anyway. I’ll be fine,” he urged her with a gentle nod of his head.

“You’re sure?”

He nodded again, and she leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

He found Bucky pacing frantically back and forth in the little room, his long strides eating up the distance in large, anxious bites. The room was crackling with energy, nervous, worried, angry. Bucky’s anxiety was ratcheting up, and he could trigger himself if he wasn’t careful.

Without Steve, Bucky had little reason to be careful.

“You need to get your head out of your ass, Bucky, and figure out what it is you really want,” Joe said loud enough to be heard over the sound of Bucky’s pacing. He stopped suddenly and pivoted to look directly at Joe.

“Joe, I –“

“It’s pretty simple, Bucky. Figure out what you really want. Give it a little time and think deep, reach into yourself and ask yourself that. Come up with an answer, and see where that takes you.”

“What if it takes me further away from Steve? I can’t … I can’t live without him in my life. I can’t lose him – “

“What do you really want, Buck? What really matters to you? In the long run, at a cellular level. Y’gotta figure that out, and everything else will fall into place. Y’gotta trust me on this one. Give Steve some space, but use the time to figure out Bucky.”

“You’re not mad,” Bucky said suddenly, his voice full of awe.

“Not mad at you, son. Just want you and Steve both to come out on top. I always knew that you and Connie weren’t a forever kind of love. You’d’a been happy together, but you’d’a always been wanting something else. Always have your eye on the horizon, not the place where you stood with her. I want you all to be happy. And to do that, you have to figure out exactly what you want – who, what, where, when. How much. And then you gotta commit to it. With all your heart and soul, no half-assing this. No cake and eat it too like you were planning with my daughter. What do you want? And do you have the courage to let yourself have it?”

Bucky stared at Joe for a long moment, eyes wide and mouth working silently. Then he admitted in a raw whisper, “I don’t really know,” and stumbled across the room to wrap his arms around Joe’s shoulders, burying his face into the crook of Joe’s neck. Joe could feel the warmth of tears being shed.

Joe’s hands naturally rose to comfort Bucky, patting him on the back and tracing light circles as if he was trying to soothe the colic in a sick child. “Gonna hurt like hell until you figure that out. So you just keep asking yourself that until you figure it out. You owe it to yourself, to Steve, to be honest with yourself. And I ain’t goin’ nowhere, Buck. You may not be marrying my daughter, but that don’t mean I don’t see you as a friend and a son. So you get to work – you figure out what you gotta figure out. And then you go for it. Promise me.”

Bucky’s tears morphed to sobs, and then to hiccups, and he gradually pulled himself back from Joe, retracting his arms like a gantry, hands resting on Joe’s upper arms as he steadied himself. “I’m sorry, Joe,” Bucky said softly, looking up at him through the curtain of his unruly hair, eyes red and bloodshot, face pale with spent emotion and pain.

“Don’t be sorry, son. Be sure. Take your time, and figure it out. This was too fast. Y’gotta let it breathe, son. And when you see Steve again, you gotta be ready to give it your all, or don’t bother. You two deserve happiness, and I’d like to see you get it together. But if you’re not willing to give it 110% or more, it’s not gonna work.”

“Is that what you had with Connie’s Mom?”

Joe felt his heart clench at the mention of Rose. Love of his life, his best friend, and the one person in the world he could count on to call him on every last bit of his shit. He missed her like a physical ache. If he closed his eyes and let his mind drift, he could hear her voice, smell her perfume, feel her fingers twined with his, her breath ghosted along his cheek. He could lose himself in those memories. He knew that Connie got scared when he let go and floated unmoored in his mind. 

His eyes focused suddenly on Bucky’s face, waiting for his answer. The boy was here, now, waiting for Joe to answer. It felt strange to have someone waiting on him, depending on him. It felt good in a way he’d forgotten.

“More,” he breathed reverently. “So much more. She was worth everything I had, everything I could give, everything I could ever hope for. If you can find that with Steve, everything you’ve ever suffered will be worth it, Bucky. You just have to figure out if that’s what you want. And then you have to do whatever you have to to let yourself have it.”

Bucky stared at him in silence – true silence, no fidgeting, no nervous energy, no words tumbling helter-skelter from his charming mouth. Joe had seen him before in moments of stillness, but they were moments in between, the beat before the breath, before the finger squeezed, before the thought turned into action. The sniper stillness. This was different. This was awestruck and reverent, and when Bucky broke the stillness to nod once, solemnly, the silence continued. 

Joe smiled. 

Mission accomplished.

&&&


	11. James “Bucky” Barnes, redux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of words is sometimes silence. And sometimes silence is truly empty.

Bucky wasn’t quite sure what he expected when he got to the apartment after he sorted out everyone’s payments for their participation in his wedding day gone wrong, but this wasn’t it.

He stood in the living room, his tie dangling forlornly from his hand, as he surveyed the “damage.” Everything was neat, in its place, no mess. There was just a gaping hole in everything where Steve _wasn’t_.

The pile of boxes and suitcases that had tripped him up earlier had all been neatly removed from the apartment. Gone too were Steve’s drawings, his paintings and prints. The only things that remained on the walls were the works Steve had gifted to Bucky over the years, or photographs that belonged to Bucky, or were shared with Steve. Of course, Steve wouldn’t take something that belonged to Bucky. Only his heart, his soul. But those he’d given freely, even if he hadn’t really comprehended the cost.

There, on the couch Bucky had liberated from the Goodwill store. A throw that Steve had liked and picked up for a song at a yard sale. Its splash of color was gone, leaving a gray smear of absence in its place. And over there, on the end table. A mock-Tiffany lamp that Steve had put back together with tape and superglue shown a cone of darkness where it no longer stood. All around the space, absences to mark Steve’s departure.

His room was gutting. Every piece of Steve that had fetched up here, accumulated and selected and handed down over the years, _gone_.

Steve, _gone_.

Bucky dropped to his knees without even realizing it, pressing the tie to his lips. The day had started off with this tie, Steve’s deft fingers teasing a proper knot out of the mess that Bucky’d made.

Always thought it would’ve been you and me.

It should have been, punk.

It has to be.

But it’s not.

The sobs started again, dredged up from the soles of his feet, wrenched through this heart, and clawing out into the air. Wracking, wrecking, devastating.

His life wasn’t empty.

His life was Steve-less.

Even separated by a country, a world, he’d never been Steve-less.

Everything hurt. Everything stung. Everything was cold, so cold it burned.

Bucky was in Hell.

&&&


	12. Sam Wilson (again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, you need time. Does time heal all wounds? It would be nice to think so, but that's not always true. When we lose someone we love, there is always an absence, a hole in our lives where that person used to be. Sometimes we're lucky enough to do something about that hole, and heal what is broken. Reaching out can sometimes be the first step.

“Now let me get this straight. You want _me_ to talk to Barnes?”

Natasha was perched on the counter, legs tucked up under her, as she shrugged an elegant shoulder and peered into her yogurt cup with a faint smile. “Maybe,” she teased.

“I ain’t givin’ up Steve’s location.”

“Not asking you to, Sam. I don’t think that’s what James is looking for.”

“Then what the hell does he want to talk to _me_ for? We’re not friends.”

“No.”

“We’re never gonna be buddies.”

“No.”

“It’s been three months already. Don’t you think it’s time he moved on?”

“No.”

“Have you talked to Steve about this, baby?”

“No.”

“And you’re not gonna give me a clue, are you? About why you want me to talk with Barnes.”

“No.”

“Thought you were angry at his ass.”

“Disappointed. Okay, maybe a little angry. He finally had everything he ever wanted, and he threw it away. Because why? Trust?”

“Trust’s an important thing to have. ‘Specially in the field. You’re far from base, far from backup, extraction, y’gotta trust the guy on your six is covering _your_ ass, not got his own head up his. Not being able to trust your team, your squad – that gets you dead. I gotta admit, I do understand that – I never agreed with Steve about keeping it all secret anyway, but the way it all went down was bullshit.”

“I know. I understand that. I just … I just expected that he’d give in a little because it was _Steve_. He had his head too far up his own ass, yes. But he’s been working on it. Giving it a lot of thought, and he tells me he has a better handle on what he wants.”

“And where do I come in?”

“He’ll let you know. When you talk to him.”

&&&

Sam opened the door to his apartment with a sour sense of duty, letting the door swing inward and jerking his head toward the living room to let Barnes pass. He wouldn’t be meeting with him at all if Nat hadn’t insisted. Demanded. Threatened. For such a small person, she carried the authority of a fucking army. Maybe a warlord. Fuck, she might as well be the joint chiefs of staff and the POTUS for all he’d do anything she ever asked of him. The fact that he loved her madly had nothing to do with it. She seriously scared him shitless when she got that way.

Barnes looked different from the last time he’d seen him. Hair three months longer, drawn back from his face in a man-bun. Cheekbones a little more pronounced, like he’d dropped some weight. Sam took a moment to really look at him then, and took in the thinner frame, like Barnes hadn’t been eating well. The smudgy shadows under his eyes hinted sleep hadn’t come easily to him, either.

Something snapped and uncoiled in Sam’s chest just then. 

He really loves Steve, he realized. 

And it’s eating him up inside that he doesn’t know where Steve is.

Well, _shit_. 

“Look, thanks for seeing me,” Barnes said hesitantly, dragging his fingers through his hair nervously, leaving it a mess of tangled strands sticking out around his face. “I know you don’t like me. I know you have reason to hate me.”

Sam looked at Barnes incredulously. “Hate you? I don’t hate you, man. I don’t like you much, yeah. Steve always treated you like the sun rose and set up your ass, but you never even noticed him. Not until, you know, your, ah –” he finished awkwardly, waving his hand vaguely toward nothing as Barnes’s nervousness transferred over to him. 

“Wedding day, yeah,” Barnes agreed with a terse nod and a subtle compression of his lips. “Yeah.”

Barnes hovered uncertainly by the sofa, and Sam practically smacked himself in the forehead. “Hey, make yourself comfortable. Can I … can I get you something? Soda, water, beer?”

“Water’s fine, thanks. ‘Preciate it,” Barnes said as he looked around for a moment, then dropped quietly down on the couch, leaning forward and rubbing his hands together.

Sam paused a second watching him, then shook his head and organized himself to go procure that water.

A few minutes later, they were settled, each with a bottle of fancy-labeled tap water, each leaning forward toward each other, each awkwardly silent.

And then, each cleared their throats at the same time, and each spoke over the other.

“Y’know, I can’t tell you where Steve is –“

“I’m not gonna ask where Steve is –“

“Oh,” Sam said, surprised. “Well, that’s good. I mean, that you’re not expecting it. ‘Cos, y’know. I can’t.”

“Steve doesn’t want me to know,” Barnes agreed sadly, taking a pull off his water.

Sam masked his discomfort like the coward he was by mirroring Barnes’s move, nodding around a grimace.

“Yeah, I figured. I gotta earn his trust back. Ain’t gonna be easy, I know. I fucked up bad. So why did Steve think you hated me?”

Sam sputtered and spat in shock at the question, then coughed out a rough laugh. “Give a brother some warning, why don’t you? Dude!”

A smirk played at the edges of Barnes’s mouth as he took a healthy swig of water. “I’m sorry about your friend. About Riley. I’m sorry you lost him rescuing me and my unit.”

“Steve told you about that, huh?”

“Wish he’d told me a lot more, but yeah.” Barnes put his bottle down and leaned back, scrubbing his hand over his mouth for a moment before sighing into a heartfelt frown. “I think I’m starting to get why Steve kept secrets. He didn’t want to change things between us, make them weird. But I can’t help feeling like him not telling me stuff like that kept me isolated, you know? Like I owed you – I owe you – and I didn’t even know it because he didn’t share. I owe you my life, the lives of my friends. The guys, they all knew, but they couldn’t say. So, there I am, stuck in the dark, excluded from something everyone else around me shared. And Steve’s got this whole group of friends, his team, and the guys know them, too, but not me. I don’t know anybody, other than you. It sucks. And it hurts.”

Sam took a deep breath and settled back into his seat. He’d never thought about it that way before. He’d always thought of Barnes as the bad guy, the charming asshole who could get anyone he chose out of their clothes in zero to sixty just on his panty-dropping smile alone. He never realized that Steve withholding information, withholding whole relationships, would make the guy, what? Lonely? Separate. Excluded, like he said. 

“Huh,” was the most intelligent thing that Sam could think to say, and tipped his bottle back to take a drink.

“Yeah,” Barnes agreed, drawing on his bottle, too.

“Barton,” Sam said simply.

“Barton what?”

“Barton’s another member of the team. Sniper. With a bow and arrow, if you can believe that shit. Specialized gear, sure, but Robin Hood, for fuck’s sake. Legolas, if you like. Hawkeye. Nerdy shit,” he added, tagging a swig.

“I knew Clint served, but he never talks about his time over there.”

“None of us do around you, because we’d have to talk about Steve. He was our CO.”

“Yeah,” Barnes said softly, turned his face so his messy hair obscured his expression for a moment while Sam mentally kicked his own ass to to the curb for saying something that he now realized was monumentally insensitive.

“Look, I don’t think Steve thought it through very well. I don’t think any of us did. He wanted it on the down low. Didn’t want you worrying or … I don’t know, he somehow thought it was going to change things. We just wanted to respect his wishes. Never really thought about it not respecting you.”

“Huh,” was Barnes’s reaction, and Sam had to smile into his water bottle a little at that. 

“So what do you want to know?”

“I want to know about your friend Steve Rogers. The person you know, the things that make him your friend. I want to see him through your eyes. I want to get to know the man you call friend. ‘Cos I think he’s someone I’ve never met before.”

Sam’s eyes widened at that observation, eyebrows reaching for his hairline. He sat up straight, looked at his bottle, and announced, “Gonna need somethin’ stronger than this for _that_ conversation. Beer?” With a nod from Barnes, he made his way back to the kitchen, calling out over his shoulder, “He ever tell you how we met? No? Yeah, well it was a protest in our freshman year of college, and he managed to get his stupid white ass manacled to a statue in the administration building …”

&&&


	13. Clint Barton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, our best intentions are thwarted by the people we love. Sometimes that bus bearing down on us? Yeah, our friends and loved ones might be in the driver's seat ...

“Laur, can you take Nate?” Clint Barton shouted over his shoulder, balancing his ten-month old wriggling armful of a son on his hip while trying to balance his cell phone between his shoulder and ear. “What’d you say, Nat?”

Just then, the doorbell rang, and Clint muttered to himself, “Fuck me,” in an exasperated tone.

“Language!” Laura reproved with a chuckle, reaching for Nathaniel and gathering him into her arms. “Say hi to Nat for me.”

“Here, you talk to her, I’ll get the door.”

Laura took the phone, grinning as she greeted Natasha on the other end of the line. Clint picked his way across the living room, stepping over toys and sidestepping a castle Jackie and Toby had built out of Legos, counting on his exceptional balance and sheer cussedness not to land on his sorry ass before he got to the door. Finally, he made it through the minefield of toddler architecture and was about to grab the door knob when he heard Laura call out, “Babe, Nat says we’re gonna have a visitor –“

Clint opened the door to find himself face to face with Bucky Barnes just as Laura added, “Bucky’s coming over.” She let out a little squeak and high-tailed it out of the living room with Nathaniel in tow, while Clint found himself gawping uncomfortably at Bucky standing on the doorstep, his finger still hovering over the doorbell.

“Hey,” Clint greeted, chewing on his lip. He and Bucky were friends, the pair of them used to go to the range every Saturday for practice, but he hadn’t seen Bucky since the wedding that wasn’t. Truth was, he hadn’t sought Bucky out, and he’d been relieved when Bucky didn’t seem interested in continuing their Saturday morning tradition.

Everything just got weird that day, what with Colonel Philips spilling the beans and Steve walking out. And Clint had seen a coward’s way out of the weird, and he’d taken it. And now it looked like it had finally come back to find him.

“Um, hey, can I come in?” Bucky asked tentatively, and Clint shook himself. 

“Yeah, sure, man, come on in. Mind the toys – we keep tellin’ the kids to clean up after themselves, but they just claim it’s all a work in progress and leave it where it all lays, huh? Whadya gonna do?”

Clint waved vaguely to the sofa and tried to smile encouragingly at Bucky as he dropped down on one of the cushions, then grimaced, shifting from one cheek to the other until he found a fist full of Lego blocks shoved down the back of the couch. “Construction materials,” Clint observed, sticking his hand out for them. Bucky tipped the collection into his palm. “Jackie’s gonna be an architect, and Toby’s gonna be a construction dude. Figure we’re set for life the two them go into business together.”

“And Nate?”

“Oh, he’s gonna be the smart one. Lawyer. Somebody’s gotta write all the contracts, yeah? So, man, what’s up? How you been?”

The words were still hanging in the air when Clint had the urge to facepalm and slink off, all in one not so smooth motion. He’d’ve known how Bucky was doing if he’d given an ounce of shit about it the past three months.

He was saved from complete embarrassment by Laura taking that moment to come back into the living room balancing a tray with a pitcher of iced tea, a trio of glasses, and a bowl of chips and thing of dip. Clint took the opportunity to jump up and take it out of her hands, murmuring, “Oh, you didn’t have to do that, honey. But I’m glad you did,” he added with a grin and a quick peck to her cheek. 

“I know you are, sweetie,” she replied with a knowing smile, relinquishing the tray. She settled onto the arm of the couch and smiled at Bucky. “How are you, Bucky? I’m sorry we haven’t seen you lately. Kids have been making me a little stir crazy – it’s nice to see an adult who isn’t also the babysitter, or a pediatrician. Or Clint.”

As excuses go for being a shit friend, it would have to do, and Bucky smiled like he accepted the implicit apology without making a big deal out of it.

“Yeah, so, how ya been?”

“Eh,” Bucky answered, threading his fingers together. Dude looked nervous. “So, I talked with Sam,” he started, and Clint leaned back into his seat apprehensively. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And he told me that you guys go way back. Like, service back.” Bucky looked up at him then, his expression … hopeful? Questioning? Where the hell was he going with this?

“Yeah, we, uh, we ran across each other once or twice,” Clint admitted cautiously, rubbing his hand over his chin slowly.

“No, like _served_ together. In the same unit. In the same unit that rescued me and my team. The unit led by Captain America. By _Steve_.”

“Look, man, I’m sorry, but I can’t –“

“Steve admitted he was there. Admitted he led the team. He hasn’t told me fuck all else, but he told me that much. And Wilson confirmed you were the sniper on the team.”

“I, uh – _shit_.”

“Go on, Clint. He knows part of the story. I never understood why all this was so hush-hush anyway. It’s caused nothing but grief,” Laura admonished from her perch on the sofa arm. Clint could feel himself curling inward, avoiding her gaze at the same time he felt his flight reflex kicking in. “What is it you want to know, Bucky? Clint will answer all your questions,” she added pointedly, and Clint looked up to see her glaring at him over Bucky’s head.

“Laur –“ he practically whined, and he cringed at how not-manly he sounded to himself.

“Cli-i-int,” she parroted. “This secrecy crap has gone on long enough. Go on, ask away. I’m looking forward to hearing the answers for once. The truth.”

“Right,” Clint agreed with a sigh. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his man-spread knees, fiddled with his wedding ring a moment, then looked up at Bucky nervously. Steve had already admitted to being Cap, to leading the mission that saved Bucky and the Howlies. Okay, so if Bucky knew that, then Clint was only filling in details, right? Steve couldn’t expect him to stay silent when Laura told him she wanted him to answer, right? Steve wouldn’t expect Clint to put his marriage in jeopardy … right? 

“Whadya wanna know?”

Bucky glanced over his shoulder at Laura, who was smiling like she’d got all the cream. She reached over and put her hands on Buck’s shoulders and grinned triumphantly at Clint. 

Yeah, he was fucked.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning, and work your way through, honey? We got all day,” she added with a diabolical grin. “You can stay for dinner, right, Bucky? We haven’t seen you for _months_. Gotta make up for that.”

Well and truly _fucked_.

“Tell me how you met Steve. Tell me about the man you know.”

&&&


	14. Tony Stark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky Barnes, PI follows the clues and interrogates the witnesses. Well, Steve's friends. That he's never met. Because Steve has kept that part of his life a secret. Because ... well, it's Steve.

“You’re not the stripper I ordered,” Tony Stark complained, hanging on the half-open door and frowning. “Go away.”

He shouldn’t have been surprised when Barnes – because of course Barton had warned him he’d be coming – shoved a booted foot into the door and pushed his way inside. He didn’t squawk like a little kid, he didn’t. That was his story, and he was sticking to it.

“Yeah, sure, come on in, make yourself at home. You don’t look like a burglar, so I guess it’s okay. Drink?”

Barnes stood in the middle of Tony’s living room cum workshop, looking around him helplessly. Tony paused then to follow his line of sight, realized there were no sittable surfaces, and chuckled to himself. “By-product of my genius – I must have over a hundred inventions in progress, and not enough places to put them. Sorry, let’s take this,” he grabbed an armful of AI components up off what he thought might be his sofa, and dumped them on the dining room table – again, by its location, that’s what he assumed the mound to be – and came back to the living room grinning at Barnes. “Sit. Take a load off. Set a spell. It won’t bite. Well, no, I can’t guarantee that. There could be nanites. It’s always nanites. Little bastards get away from me sometimes, and I find them in the weirdest places. Up your ass is not a good way to locate nanites, I can tell you. What about that drink?”

Barnes stood in front of the cleared space on the couch and stared at it uncertainly, then spun around to face Tony. “Yeah, sure, whatever you’re having,” he answered absently, then turned back to peer warily at the couch. “There really nanites running around?”

“Could be. Pretty sure I designed them. I dunno. Sometimes I dream stuff up, forget to build it. Occupational hazard,” Tony answered, turning toward the bar and retrieving some of the good stuff from one of the overhead cabinets. The rest of the place may be chaos, but the bar was always organized for easy access at any time, day or night.

“Oh? What’s your occupation?” Barnes called, and Tony grinned, measuring out a healthy couple of fingers of fine whiskey. He snagged an ice tray from the under-counter fridge, and doled out a couple of cubes into each glass. 

“Surely you’ve heard of me. I am kind of famous, after all. Infamous, even. Genius? Billionaire? Philanthropist? Playboy? Any of those ring a bell?”

Barnes looked around the wreck that was Tony’s living room and smirked. “So you couldn’t afford a maid?”

“Maid’s year off. Maids get in the way, ruin experiments. Trigger explosions. Make insurance premiums go sky-high. I may be rich, but that doesn’t mean I like to pay more than I have to for stuff like that. Here.” He thrust the glass into Barnes’s hand . “It’s good stuff, don’t let it go to waste.”

Barnes took the glass, swirled it slightly, then sniffed it gently. At the appreciative way he closed his eyes and smiled, Tony found himself warming to this stranger who’d invaded his space at the ungodly hour of … oh. Two o’clock in the afternoon. Not so ungodly. Shrugging, Tony dropped down into an open spot on an armchair – he assumed – carefully calculating the amount of slosh he could get away with and not spill his drink. He smiled to himself, noting not a drop had been lost in the slosh. Then he winced and shifted onto his right butt-cheek, rummaging around in the chair behind him.

“What’s wrong?” Barnes asked, glancing up and licking his lips. My, those were sinful lips. Actually, the entire package was kinda sinful. No wonder Captain Stick-up-his-glorious-ass has the hots for this dude.

Tony didn’t answer, simply pulled out the offending object, a long cylindrical object with various protuberances along its shaft. He frowned at it, trying to place just what it was and what it was supposed to do.

“What’s that?”

“Either it’s my attempt to make a real sonic screwdriver, or an advanced sex toy. Pretty sure it’s a sonic screwdriver.”

“Ah.”

“Doctor Who? Longest running science fiction show in the world?”

“Which Doctor?”

“Hmmmph. You’re not such a Luddite after all. Tenth, of course.”

“I’m partial to Eleven, myself. And Two, if we’re talking classic.”

“We weren’t. So, I don’t know you. You don’t know me. Why are you in my house?”

“You let me in.”

“Yes, because you were knocking at the door fit to raise the dead. Or wake me out of a nap. Which you did. So … why?"

“I’m looking for Steve Rogers.”

“Yeah, I’m not drunk enough to play that game.”

“What game?”

“The game where you ply me with liquor until I give up the location of our esteemed Captain.”

“Not planning to ply you. Not asking for his location. Although, I understand he’s staying in one of your homes.”

“Was. Will be. When he’s around. Not there now, so don’t go looking. You’ll be disappointed. With the Steve-sized hole.”

“I’m already dealing with that. Well, maybe not dealing, but living with it.”

Tony paused with the rim of his glass touching his lips, suddenly feeling like an asshole. Well, if he was honest with himself – and he tried to be at least once a day – he was always an asshole. It’s just that he felt like one right now. “Yeah, that’s right. You guys are splitsville.”

“We sorta got married – he tell you that?”

“In excruciating detail. I don’t know why, but Steve always makes the mistake of thinking I give a fuck.”

“You’re close to Steve.”

“Yeah, sure. We’ve been through a lot together,” Tony shrugged, letting himself take a sip of his drink and savor the smoky burn as the liquid slid over his tongue and down his throat.

“I’m Steve’s best friend. Or was.”

“Yeah. He always said that.”

“So how come we’ve never met before? How come I only found out about you when I overheard him talking to Peggy Carter the day of our wedding?”

“Well, I’m wounded, to say the least. Considering all we’ve been through together, I’d’ve expected him to at least mention he knew me. If only for the cache. Being that I’m famous, after all.”

“Yeah. So if you’re friends with Steve, and Steve never told me about you, that’s gotta mean you’re part of the life Steve won’t share with me. You’re part of his unit. The one he keeps telling me is so classified I don’t have clearance to know about.”

“That what he told you? We’re classified? Well, he ain’t wrong. Sort of. Not us as individuals. But us as a team. What we did. What we could do. What we might be called on to do again.”

“Steve took an honorable discharge.”

“Did he.”

And there it was. The moment of realization. “ _Shit_.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed, taking a pull from his glass, swirling his tongue over the ice cubes, licking away the droplets of whiskey before deciding he needed a refill.

“He never talked about his service in the past tense. It was all present tense. I never thought that meant anything.”

“Ever notice how Steve-O has to go on business trips every so often? He’s a fucking artist. How often do artists have emergency art meetings, for fuck’s sake?” Tony asked, filling his glass and holding it up to consider Barnes through the prism of the amber liquid and faceted cubes.

“Why are you here, then?”

“I live here. In case you hadn’t noticed,” he nodded toward the mess, waved his hand with a royal flourish and then giggled into his drink. Well, no. not a giggle. A manly chuckle. Seriously, keep up.

“Not here, here, but not with him here.”

“Team’s disbanded. We all had enough.” He walked back over to his chair and lowered himself slowly now, thinking about what he was about to say. “He followed you home when you were medicalled out, to see you through your rehab and recovery. The rest of us were happy to call it a day, put all that behind us. Try to find some normal again. None of us were sorry to see it all end, trust me.”

“And did you? Find normal?”

“What’s normal for a guy like me? I get the shakes, I can’t sleep through the night, I’m a danger to my girlfriend, and I can’t shut my brain off.” He barked a harsh chuckle. “That’s as close to normal I’m ever gonna see.” At Barnes’s bleak expression, he added, “Had a fucked up childhood. PTSD is my normal.”

“And Steve? How does he fit into that?”

“He never walks away from a fight, even one he can’t win.”

“Yeah.”

“So … yeah.”

“Reserve?”

“in a matter of speaking. So Captain America is still classified …”

“Because Captain America is still active.”

Tony raised his glass in honor of Barnes’s correct assumption. 

“I’m assuming they come to him –“

“Usually. This time … this time he went to them. Haven’t seen him for almost three months.”

“Since our wedding.”

“To which I would have liked to have gotten an invite.”

“You would have if I’d known you exist.”

“Touché.”

“It was all very last minute.”

“So I heard. Comedy of errors, grand declaration of love, happy ending followed by a monumental misunderstanding and a tearful breakup. The stuff of Hollywood. You’re gonna try to get him back.”

“If I can, yeah.”

“Then make sure I’m on the guest list. My plus one is Pepper Potts. I don’t do fish or chicken, be creative in your menu. Nothing with okra. Or better yet, let me pay for the wedding, use my own chef. Least I can do.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I’m the man who created Captain America.”

“Then you’d better tell me all you know.”

“I’m still bound by confidentiality. Pesky things, contracts. I have lawyers, though. I should get them to get me out of the confidentiality agreements. Then again, they can’t get me out of my word to Steve.”

“Not asking you to break it. Not asking for military secrets. I want you to tell me everything you know about Steve Rogers the man. Tell me your stories.”

“Stories? Do I look like Mr. Rogers?”

“Trust me, not at all. Not even a little bit. But I need to know about him. Tell me about your friend, Steve Rogers.”

&&&


	15. Nick Fury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky makes his way up the chain of command, and finally finds someone who isn't afraid of breaking their word to Steve Rogers.

“Well, look who finally made his way here. James Buchanan Barnes, ‘Bucky’ to his friends. Get your ass in here, Barnes, before I kick it down the street,” Nick Fury commanded, practically hauling Rogers’ old pal into his apartment. He glanced up and down the hallway quickly before closing the door again.

“Anyone follow you?”

“You gotta be kidding! What’re you, the spymaster?”

Nick was silent, just stared balefully at Barnes with his one good eye for a long moment before Barnes just snorted at him and turned away. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know everything’s hush-hush and need to know, and just suck my dick, man. I am so over it.”

“Don’t swing that way. Although I gather you do. Sorry about the wedding – I heard it was nice until Chester opened his yap.”

“Yeah, it was,” Barnes admitted quietly, and Nick knew he’d hit a nerve. 

“Chester never did approve, you know,” Nick admitted, gesturing Barnes into his living room. “Sit,” he commanded, and Barnes dropped down onto the cushion like a good little ex-soldier. Nick allowed himself a predatory grin – Barnes may returned to a semblance of civilian life, but he’d never let go the military mindset entirely.

“Approve?”

“Steve’s insistence everyone keep you in the dark.”

“Y’know, for all he knows, I did come to back in that compound, and I did see him in uniform. I just don’t understand why keeping it secret is so fucking important to him.”

“You’ve been talking to the others.” A statement, not a question, and Barnes respected him enough to answer truthfully, even though this was the first time they’d ever met.

“Working my way through his friends, yeah.”

“Interesting interrogation method. Stark tells me it was therapeutic, but he’s an alcoholic asshole with a god complex, so what does he know?”

“You really missing an eye, or you like looking like a pirate?”

Nick let his grin grow evil as he lifted the patch over his left eye, revealing the mottled, milky white orb that was the remains of his left eye.

“Yeah, okay. So, not a get-up.”

“Sort of a get-up. I could wear nothing, but I find it diverts attention from where I want it. So I eliminate the distraction – people get used to the patch real fast. The eye? Not so much. But, we digress. You lookin’ for me to tell you a bedtime story about how little Stevie Rogers is the one for me?”

“Hope the fuck not – I’m still hoping to win him back. Don’t think I could compete with your swagger.”

“Then what? I gotta say, it’s an intriguing method for gathering intel. What have you learned that surprised you?”

“That you think you can distract me. I am, after all, a man on a mission.”

“That you are. I’m guessing no one’s told you where Steve is?”

“Only that he’s not here.”

“Not in the States, right.”

“And you are his CO.”

“Was. Retired. Not active anymore.”

“Not active, but not deactivated. I can read between the lines. You’re the one they come to when they need something special, and Steve’s your go-to guy for the impossible.”

“Put that all together from hearing people talk about their feelings about your buddy, did you?”

“That and your service record, Colonel. Philips is my CO, you’re Steve’s. His team is out, I’ve spoken to everyone but Carter, and she’s next on my list. Steve can be stupid and bullheaded, but he’s not going to go into a situation with no backup and no one he can trust. In the absence of his team, there must be someone involved that he trusts – I’m betting that’s the guy who asked him to go in the first place. Ergo …”

“Simple math?”

“Deductive reasoning. I like mysteries.”

“Fancy yourself a modern day Sherlock Holmes?”

“More like a CSI aficionado.”

Nick barked a laugh again. He could see why Rogers liked this kid. He couldn’t speak to his sex appeal or how attractive the guy was – he seemed to be put together symmetrically and with some style, but Nick wasn’t kidding when he said he didn’t swing that way. Truth was, he didn’t swing any way. Zero interest. But the guy was sharp and sharper-witted, and he gave as good as he got. He knew from Chester that the man was good at his job, one of the best snipers the Army had ever seen, cool and collected, never missed, and never took out a civilian target. His service record bore that out and then some. His team was legendary for their hard-partying ways, and the precision by which they acted as a team. Barnes had been a tremendous asset to the effort in Afghanistan, until that sick fuck Zola had twisted up his guts and fucked up his arm so the Army had no choice but to let him retire on a medical.

Rogers had followed him home, ostensibly to care for Barnes as he recovered, but everyone who kenw Steve Rogers knew he carried a torch for his buddy that would never go out. World would burn away leaving a hunk of ash floating in space, and Rogers’s torch would still be burning. And yet, when he’d finally had the chance to get into Barnes’s pants with Barnes’s enthusiastic consent, a tiff had sent him packing and back to job. A tiff that would have never happened if Rogers’s head hadn’t been so firmly wedged up his shapely ass.

Boys in love. Spare him. Seriously, he did not want to know.

He’d heard from the others that Barnes was down, subdued, but it was clear that with each interview, his trademark cocksure smirk was back in force, and with it, his special brand of humor and supreme confidence.

Okay.

Nick could work with that.

“So, you like a mystery.”

“Yep,” Barnes replied, drawing out the P until it popped like a Fleer bubble.

“What makes you think I’m gonna tell you shit?”

“Like you said, you didn’t agree with Steve’s decision.”

“No, I did not. It doesn’t mean I’m going to break his confidence.”

“Doesn’t mean you won’t …” Barnes cajoled, the smirk growing. 

Nick had to admit he was enjoying himself. It was nice to have someone who wasn’t scared shitless of him lobbing back at him like this. 

“What is it you want, Barnes? You said you’re hoping to win him back. What’s the plan?”

“Steve has an entire life that I’m not a part of – a life he actively excluded me from. Not just a history, but friends, interests, everything. He has a face he shows other people that I’ve never seen. I’m trying to get the outline. Thing is, when you really love someone, you gotta love every part of them. I’m trying to get to know the parts he hasn’t shown me yet. The parts he shows others. Think of it as building a three-dimensional picture. Trying to build the topographic map, get the weather intel, the full picture before I take the shot.”

“Fair enough.”

“Are you and Steve friends?”

“No. Next question.”

“But you respect him.”

“He has an advanced skillset. Skills I can use. I respect his value.”

“But you respect him, as a person, not just an asset.”

Nick felt his lips slide into a smile again. He inclined his head in graceful defeat. “Yes, I respect him as a person, not just an asset. I would call.”

Barnes smirked at that, eyes dancing. “Do you like him as a person?”

“I don’t need to like someone to put their skills to use. There’s no need for touchy feely feelings in war, son.”

“Doesn’t hurt to like your team.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Nick sighed. “Except when you have to make the hard decisions. Then, emotions can be a disadvantage.”

“Like?”

“Like when your team was taken hostage, and your commander had to make a hard decision about sending in more troops and risking more deaths in a no-win situation.”

Barnes sat back, the breath knocked out of him. Hah, Nick thought, didn’t think I’d go there, did you, fucker? Yeah, he was tired of Steve’s stupid-ass agenda of silence. And whether Barnes knew it or not, he’d come to the one person who could go over Steve’s head and reveal all, and not suffer any consequences for it.

Nick wasn’t afraid of Steve Rogers. Not even if half the brass treated him as a bogeyman and the enemy said prayers to whatever gods they believed in that they’d never come face to face with the demon that was Captain America. Dude was not a tights-wearing superhero, for fuck’s sake. He was a determined risk-taker and professional idiot who’d been lucky so far. And luck eventually ran out, even for superheroes.

“So –“

“So, yeah. Chester was forced to make the decision to let you and your men die rather than send in more troops who’d likely die in the process. More American lives lost, and still you would be prisoners or worse. But your pal? Soon as he got wind of your capture, he was on his way. Broke rank, broke regs, broke fucking international treaties and laws to get to you. And his damn team disobeyed his orders to go in right behind him.”

“I’ve heard some of this from the others, even from Steve.”

“He’d’a set the world on fire for you. Then after he recovered you, he was all blushing virgin about it. Don’t tell Bucky,” Nick said in a falsetto. “He shouldn’t have to deal with this. I don’t want our relationship to change.” Nick settled back in his seat and raised his right eyebrow at Barnes, challenging him to answer. Barnes shrugged and looked at him expectantly. As answers go, it wasn’t a bad one.

“Relationships change, goddamnit. People change. And it’s high time that everyone gets their heads out the asses and gets on with life.”

Again, Barnes waited patiently for Nick to go on. Okay, then. If he was going to be patient, Nick would reward that.

“He tell you he was up on charges? For breaking rank, regs, international treaty, and international law?”

“Not in so many words, but I’m not surprised.”

“Whole team banded together, your men, too, to testify. Me, too. I don’t like the idea of leaving men behind. And thanks to Steve being stupid in love with you, we not only got you and your team back, liberated some influential locals, recovered a couple of aide workers, and took a warlord out of circulation. Lost a good man that day, though.”

“Riley. Sam’s friend.”

“Good man, Riley. He and Wilson were quite the team. Shared everything. Wilson was seriously fucked up after. He’s gotten better, but he’ll never be 100%. You never are. _You_ aren’t.”

Barnes looked like he might protest, and then he thought better of it, nodding slowly.

“Steve’s not.”

Barnes looked up at that, brow furrowed, then smoothing out as realization spread.

“He needs to get his ass out of combat, and get his head back into civilian life. He’s a useful asset, but he’s looking to get sorry ass killed right now, rather than deal with all the shit with you.” Nick paused at the incredulous, horrified expression on Barnes’s face. “Yeah, I think the whole ‘don’t tell Bucky’ thing is a load of horseshit meant to keep you two idiot white boys from talkin’ about your feelings. I’m done with this shit.”

“He’s on a mission right now, isn’t he? Steve is still going on missions, and he doesn’t have his team on his six.”

“No, he does not. Stark provided some tech, and Carter some intel. My people are on the ground with him, so no one’s gonna just let him get himself killed. But it’s different. They don’t know his tells, they don’t have his rhythm. And he doesn’t know theirs. And like I said, I don’t think he’s going in with the right headspace. I don’t want to send in a soldier who’s not looking to come home.”

Barnes drew in a long, unsteady breath, eyes wide, a fine tremor in his hands. “Thought you said you weren’t active anymore.”

“Don’t mean I don’t have a hand stirring the pot. I got people. I got resources. I got a long reach.”

At the helpless, hopeless look on Barnes’s face, Nick relented and shook his head. He picked up a pad of paper and a pen and scrawled a location and a time on it. He tore off the sheet and handed it across to Barnes. “This is a rendezvous you need to make. Be there. And have Rogers’s team there, too. Yours, too, if you can swing it. I’ll make sure he’s there.”

Barnes looked at the small piece of paper ardently, then raised his face to reveal tears tracking down his cheeks. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“Talk to Carter next. And make sure you’re ready to do this for the long haul. Now get outta my living room. _Dancing with the Star_ is about to start. And I do not share that with anybody.”

&&&


	16. Peggy Carter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now Bucky gets to talk with someone who's truly scary: Peggy Carter, the only other person Bucky knows that Steve has loved. Only, the truth is not what he expected. And he's got to prove himself to the lady herself.

“Well, darling, I expected you days ago. What kept you?” Peggy Carter stood in her doorway draped along the edge of the door and considered him. They’d met only a few times, but Peggy felt she knew Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes well based on the bits and bobs that Steve had shared over the years. The rhapsodizing over a pint, the pining when he’d had too much to drink. The weeping phone calls when Barnes had found himself yet another willing partner who wasn’t Steve. She’d known Steve over a decade, and Barnes had been Steve’s best friend for over twice that time, and yet they’d only met a handful of times, and Steve had been careful to keep them at arms’ length on those occasions. If she’s exchanged a more than a few dozen words with James Barnes over the past decade, Peggy Carter would eat her vintage felt fedora. With malt vinegar. And bourbon neat chaser.

The man standing in front of her apartment door was most emphatically _not_ the man that Steve Rogers was perpetually besotted by. 

“Um, I, uh,” he replied inarticulately, obviously goggling at her as he stumbled over his words. “I didn’t know if you’d be willing to see me. Considering.”

He was almost adorable, the nervous way he glanced up at her through his ridiculously long lashes, the way his fingers toyed with the zipper on his leather jacket. But his anxiety seemed to crawl under his skin, making him look like he was in constant motion, even as he was standing still. Shadows collected under his eyes, bruised and sleepless.

Nick had painted a picture of a cocky young man on the scent of the love of his life, but Peggy saw none of that here. Barnes was hunched in on himself, as though he were trying to occupy less space, fly under the radar, perhaps? He looked positively cowed, and that did not jive with anything she knew about the man, nothing she’d ever seen, nothing she’d ever heard. 

This did not make sense.

“I understood that Nick Fury instructed you to see me next. Why would you think I’d not be willing to see you, James?” she asked, genuinely puzzled as she stepped aside and ushered Barnes into her flat with a wave that some might call regal. Peggy called it practiced. When she’d been a child, she’d decided she was going to be queen when she grew up, and so she’d practiced her royal wave until it was perfect. It was quite disappointing to learn that unless she married into the royal family, it was highly unlikely she’d ever be Queen of England. So little Peggy Carter had repurposed that single-minded devotion to mastering a task to spycraft. Yet, every so often, especially when she was nervous, the royal wave slipped out. People thought she snobbish; fact was, she was merely anxious. And seeing James Barnes in the flesh made her very anxious indeed. Especially a James Barnes that appeared to be so … _broken_.

Peggy was going to have to calm him down if this interview was going to be successful.

Really, she shared Nick’s exasperation over Steve’s ridiculous secrecy clause. Just look at all the damage it continued to cause.

She’d been counting on Barnes being ready to blast through it all, dredge up the truth, consequences be damned, and just get on with it, thank you very much.

So, yes, the squirrelly posture and the downcast eyes were a bit of a letdown. 

She masked her disappointment by turning to close the door gently, pressing it so the lock snicked quietly into place. She took a moment to draw a deep breath, arrange her features into a semblance of control, and rolled her shoulders into place, so that when she turned toward him, she was the picture of masterful womanhood. He glanced up at her with a liquid expression, as though he might burst into tears at any moment.

Well, that was disconcerting.

There was nothing for it but to forge on. And perhaps pick up some intel on the way so she could formulate a plan. She was good at that. She’d play to her strengths.

She sat down opposite him, crossing her ankles as she flicked her hem into position and leaned decorously toward him. Demure. Unthreatening. Perhaps even a wee bit weak.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. Ah. Found out. So be it.

“So, Sergeant Barnes. Tell me what I can do for you.”

The question seemed to surprise him, which surprised her. After all, he was here for her help, was he not? And it was intriguing that he did not correct her use of his military designation. He recognized this as a formal interview. That could prove interesting.

“I, uh, I feel really awkward about this. Knowing your history with Steve and all.”

“Oh? What would make you feel awkward?” she asked, truly surprised. There was nothing awkward about her relationship with Steve Rogers, personal or professional, that should color any conversation with Steve’s mad gay crush.

The expression on his face would be downright comical if it weren’t so clearly distraught. “Just what do you think the nature of my relationship with Steve Rogers is, Sergeant?”

“You’re the love of his life. He was broken up about you ending the affair –“

“Affair!” The bark of laughter bubbling up from her toes caught her by surprise so she didn’t contain it. He flinched as though struck. “Oh my. Is that what he told you? That we were lovers? That _I_ was the love his life? Oh!” she had to clap her hand over her mouth to contain the giggles. “Oh, my, Steven. What a tangled web you’ve woven!”

“Yes?” he answered hesitantly.

“Well, that would have broken a number of regs, not to mention severely compromised our working relationship. Certainly, we’ve had some convivial brainstorming sessions over coffee and pastries, and we do try to get together every so often for dinner or lunch when I’m in town. I’m quite fond of the captain, as well, as I think to think he is of me. But fond in a strictly friendly or possibly familial way. However, in other circumstances …” she let herself muse a moment, but quickly brought herself back to the conversation at hand. “But I’m afraid that Steve has once again … fiddled … the truth.”

He followed her rant with a furrowed expression, as though he was carefully parsing her words for hidden meaning. “Regs. Right. Because that would be sexual harassment if he, as the senior officer –“

“Junior officer. I was the ranking officer of the unit. Major Margaret Carter, at your service, Sergeant.”

His hand twitched, as though his Pavlovian response was to snap a salute to a superior officer. She waved him off with a smile. “You were his CO?”

“Not quite. My specialty is intelligence. I came to the unit on loan from MI6. Support without being support the British public could pass judgment on, I suppose. I had no real desire to lead a team into combat, and Steve acquits himself quite well in that regard. So we had something of a symbiotic relationship, I suppose, and I acted as another one of the team’s specialists. You led a blended unit yourself, Sergeant. Americans, Brits, French. I’m a firm believer in cross-cultural exchange. But yes, I was the ranking officer, albeit for a different service branch. 

“And no, we were never romantically or sexually involved. I might have been interested if he’d been remotely available, but Steve was always quite smitten with someone he’d known since childhood. When we could get him to talk about himself at all, he really couldn’t stop talking about _him_. And when we heard that Steve’s childhood friend had been captured, Steve relied on me to ferret out the truth, get the intel on where he was being held, how to get in, how to get out. Were it not for losing Staff Sergeant Riley, I’d have put it down as our most successful mission. Despite the threat of courtmartial.”

“Wait, if you were the ranking officer, why was Steve on the hook for the operation –“

“Because he went in against direct orders. Mine and Colonel Philips. And Colonel Fury’s, I might add, his own direct superior. Steve went for a full trifecta that day. Plus, I regret to say, Central Command had already put the kibosh on any rescue attempts. There was a very delicate political situation in play that made any kind of military solution out of the question. Not even the SEAL team had the green light. And then there was Steve. One man wrecking crew, that one. State had their hands full for months managing the fallout.”

“How could I not know any of this?”

“Because our Steve is a self-flagellating idiot who was convinced if you’d known the truth, you would have offered up your lily-white body as recompense for his valor and chivalry, regardless of how you truly felt about him. He was petrified you’d act out of gratitude, not actual desire or love. Because, I daresay, he didn’t quite trust you, Sergeant Barnes.” She paused a moment, watching that realization sink in, and felt a moment’s vindication. Barnes seemed to fold in on himself, hinting that Steve might not be the only self-flagellating idiot in this relationship-that-wasn’t. Peggy chided herself internally for her poor form, and added, “Plus, you were in a medically-induced coma at the time. Drink?”

“I – what?”

“Drink. Alcohol? In a lovely cut glass tumbler, with ice or without? I prefer my bourbon neat, how about you?”

“Rocks, please,” he replied absently, looking down at his hands where his fingers twisted together.

“Do I make you nervous, Sergeant Barnes?” she asked as she passed by him to go to the bar. She watched him on the periphery of her vision as she busied herself with the drinks.

“You confuse me,” he admitted quietly. “All this time, I thought Steve was carrying a torch for _you_. That you were why he didn’t date. Well, first dates, yeah, but nothing ever came of any of the dates people set him up on. Any of the very few dates he initiated.”

“No, I’m fairly sure that would be _you_. The one he was carrying a torch for. Living in perpetual hope for,” she replied, counting out the ice cubes and watching the lights in the room flicker in their faceted depths.

“I never believed he could want me,” Barnes admitted quietly. It was a heartwrenching admission, and Peggy paused, holding an ice cube in the tongs for a moment before she took a breath, pasted her smile back in place, and forged on.

“So you saw the illusion he created for you. Honestly, it’s a wonder that boy doesn’t knock himself out daily with all the stupid he carries around,” she observed with a chuckle, carrying the tumblers back to the seating area. She held out the glass filled with ice and bourbon to Barnes, and he took it silently, nodding his thanks. “Although apparently, he’s quite adept at subterfuge. Perhaps he has a career in espionage, after all,” she mused, half to herself, and half to see what Barnes’s reaction would be. He paused in taking a sip of his drink, frozen in tableaux, then seemed to shake himself and allow himself to take that sip. But clearly the suggestion that Steve might fit into the spy world unnerved him.

“The question is do you want him. Do you want him enough to _fight_ for him,” she said as she seated herself again. This time, she leaned back into the chair, crossing her legs comfortably as she sipped from her drink. She smiled at the smoky sweet flavor of the burn caressing her throat. She watched as he took a healthy swallow, held it in his mouth a moment to swish around, and then let it slide down his throat, closing his eyes to the burn. “It’s been three months, and you haven’t attempted to reach Steve at all, haven’t reached out to anyone before your little tour of Steve’s team. Why?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s been a lot to take in.”

“No doubt.”

“At first, I was paralyzed. I couldn’t imagine my life without him.”

“Hmm.”

“And then I realized, I _couldn’t_ imagine my life without him. My life without him is _unacceptable_. It took me a while to figure that out.”

Ah. Now he was talking. This is the sort of thing that Peggy was hoping to hear. But Barnes was a wild card, and she wasn’t sure she trusted him anymore than Steve evidently had.

“What if he doesn’t want you back?” she challenged, taking a small sip of her drink again, watching him through her lashes as she did so.

He hand stilled, gripping the tumbler tightly, his knuckles growing whiter, face reddening slightly. A nerve struck, a wound inflicted. 

“I can’t think that. Did he … did he say anything to you?”

“What makes you think I’ve spoken to him.”

“Fury said you provided intel. Stark said you were the go-between for Steve moving into one of his houses.”

“Yes. I did. Provide intel. And yes, I did speak with him. And yes, I did arrange for him to have a place to stay. He couldn’t very well live with you after ending your relationship on your fake wedding day. Speaking of which, I shall expect an invitation should you try again. The entire team will, I daresay.”

“And the entire team will get invitations, now that I know they exist.”

“Yes, there is that. It’s unfortunate that none of us were invited to your wedding to your ladyfriend. Perhaps if Steve had had more of us around, we might have been able to quell Chester before he made such a hash of things.”

“I don’t think I’m sorry he did.”

“Pardon?”

“I never would have a frigging clue about the truth otherwise.”

“Steve is a man of secrets.”

“Steve is an ass. All this time he’s had everyone tied in fucking knots over whether or not I’d be sincere in wanting to suck his dick. Seriously! If that isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is.”

“I’m sure if we give it some thought and pool our resources, we can come up with something.”

“True. Steve’s always had a butt-load of stupid.”

“But what if you can’t break him of his habit of secrets? What if he won’t tell you everything? What if when he speaks, you hear things you don’t like? Things that frighten you, worry you, terrify you? Can you live with that? Or are you going to throw another hissy fit and prove to him that all his suspicions are founded in truth? Hmm?”

“And what if he does things without thinking of how it will affect me, his partner? Ever think of that? If we end up married, yeah, I’m gonna have to let some stuff slide, I’m gonna have to meet him halfway. But he’s gonna have to do the same. He can’t keep livin’ life like he doesn’t matter. Like no one loves him. And that’s what he’s been doin’, isn’t it – livin’ like he figures no one’s gonna mourn him, no one’s gonna miss him. And I’m not just talkin’ about me – I’m not alone in caring about that punk. But he can’t treat me like I don’t have a say. Not if we’re gonna make it work. I won’t _let_ him.”

“And if he walks away again?”

“Next time I don’t care what anyone says. I’m following. I’m not letting him go. I needed to figure that out for myself, so yeah, we needed to have some space. But how is he using his? He’s back in action, on a mission, without his team, and with backup he doesn’t know. Tell me he isn’t begging for something bad to happen.”

“You know I can’t. I believe the same thing. I believe that when you two fought, he decided that everything he’d hoped for, the torch he’d carried all these years, it was all a waste. That nothing good would happen. Could happen.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward urgently, spearing him with her gaze, and he looked right back at her, just as intently. Gone was the fatigue, the nerves, the anxiety. In its place burned a fierceness, a focus, a passion. Determination. “That’s why you have to fight for him, Sergeant Barnes. You need to make him see how much you care. You need to grab on tight and hold him until he understands he’s never going to lose you. Can you do that?”

“Watch me,” he answered fervently. “And call me Bucky.”

Peggy Carter sat back in her seat and smiled. Hello, darling. _There_ you are. Go get him, tiger.

&&&


	17. James “Bucky” Barnes (once more with feeling)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So much has happened. Bucky needs a moment to breathe and process it all. Before he finally gets the chance to set it right.
> 
> And in examining what he's learned, Bucky comes to a realization that is painful and illuminating. And just may be the thing he's been looking for.

Bucky cracked open an eye and groaned, tugging the covers up over his head and praying to die. Like _now_.

Who knew that Peggy Carter had a hollow fucking leg? Damn, that woman could put away the booze! His head hurt so bad, and his mouth tasted so fucking horrible, he kinda wished that he’d passed on those last few rounds. Or swallowed a bullet instead. He was a lightweight compared to that woman! And that was something no one had ever said ever about Bucky Barnes.

But it was worth it. _Steve_ was worth it.

He scooched down in bed to consider what he remembered of the night before, of his mission to discover Steve in the eyes of his friends. A picture was certainly emerging, although he wasn’t sure he was happy about everything he’d learned. The picture of Steve that was forming made him sad and guilty at the same time it made him mad and anxious.

Something had changed in Peggy as they’d talked, and she’d become friendlier and more tactile as the evening wore on. More relaxed and trusting, he supposed. He’d said or done something to prove he was legit in his feelings for Steve, his commitment. And he’d relaxed, too, learning that she was not the “one who got away” or the “one who broke Steve’s heart.” He was disappointed that her role in Steve’s life had been just another lie, though. Part of him was beginning to wonder if he’d ever known Steve at all, if anything was true. 

Had he been in love with a ghost all these years?

But Peggy had been open about Steve’s time in Afghanistan, and what she knew of his life stateside since. She’d suggested they Skype the remaining members of the team for him to talk to, folks he never would have found on his own since they didn’t live in the city. Since he didn’t even know they existed until Peggy mentioned them.

First was Thor, who’d returned home to northern Minnesota when he’d returned to civilian life, to take over the family business with his brother, the equally mythically named Loki. Apparently the Odinson-Laufeyson clan traced their lineage back to the early settlers of the state, and were fond of naming their kids after Norse gods. Bucky wasn’t at all surprised to learn they had a sister named Sif, although it was funny to learn that Thor had married a woman, a scientist, with the prosaic name of Jane, while his brother had married her colleague, named Darcy. Actually, if he wanted to stretch it, he supposed they were both literary names to go with the mythic.

Sister Sif was, apparently, not interested in settling down at the moment (hence no husband, wife, or significant other of any shape or size), instead pursuing a career outside the family business, and was currently touring the country as the bassist of an all-female metal band called Lorelei’s Call. Bucky debated briefly whether to admit he’d heard of the band, and had a collection of their music on his phone, but when he’d mentioned it, Thor had boomed a laugh and declared him a brother in the clan. Which was good, because he really fucking liked the band, and secured a promise from Thor of an invite next time they were in the area.

He could only imagine what it would be like to be in the presence of the man. As it was, he was every inch the god he was named after, big, muscled, blond, and full of boisterous good cheer. His wife, who poked her face into the conversation midway to say hello to Peggy and look curiously at Bucky, stage whispering, “That’s the guy your buddy so gone on? _Nice_.” Bucky had turned to Peggy with a sheepish grin and a blush.

“He talk about me to _everybody_?”

“Anyone who would listen, darling. You do know that his immense capacity for compartmentalization is exactly why he’s been successful as ‘Captain America’ – he has this place he goes to where nothing phases him, nothing touches him. People think he has no fear, but he does – he just goes deep so it doesn’t touch him. Part of his method was always to talk about you. Tell stories from your childhoods. Your latest letters. That would put him in the right headspace, and he’d disappear into that.”

And that had chilled Bucky to his core. He knew that about Steve, knew that there was a place he could retreat to where he felt nothing, feared nothing, and where nothing could hurt him. He’d found that place when they were children, when his health issues threatened to take him at nearly every turn, when bullies would wail on him, when the future looked so bleak as to be non-existent. He’d made a decision that he wasn’t going to be afraid, wasn’t going to let his body stop him from living, and so he searched and found that place – not a happy place, but a calm place – and would sink into it when things got too hard, when his body fought him and it seemed like it would win.

When at 10, pneumonia nearly killed him.

When at 13 and he’d just come out, Brock Rumlow’s fists broke his jaw, his nose, and two ribs, collapsing a lung, and if it hadn’t been for an EMT’s quick thinking and a ball point pen, he wouldn’t have even made it to the ER.

When the only option at 15 had been a complex surgery that could as likely kill him as it would save him.

When at 18, his Mom had died, leaving Steve suddenly alone in the world without the one person he’d been able to count on no matter what.

When he’s looking death in face. Often enough that it’s a thing. A thing his whole team recognizes.

When he was faced with losing his best friend, maybe? And what did that mean? To marriage, to a partner, to simply not-Steve? When Bucky’d announced his first girlfriend, Steve had been quiet, preternaturally so, and had remained like that for days. Had he gone to his calm place then? And for every girlfriend, boyfriend, and hookup Bucky’d claimed ever since?

Bucky remembered wondering if there would ever be a time when Steve would go there and not come back. And realized that maybe that’s exactly what happened. That Steve had gone there to protect his heart, and he’d never fully came out.

Bucky had spent so much time and energy protecting his own heart, filling his life with willing partners who weren’t Steve, who couldn’t be Steve, shielding his heart from the pain of his belief that Steve was never going to be interested in him as other than a friend, that he hadn’t seen how Steve’s own heart had been hurting. How Steve had disappeared into that place that Bucky both revered and feared.

Bucky threw the covers down and scowled at the day. “Jesus,” he breathed to himself, scrubbing his hand over his face to wipe away the drool dried at the corners of his mouth. He buried his face in his hands, feeling the hot, prickly sensation of tears threatening. 

How had he managed to let them both down so much?  
  
He was glad that they’d also Skyped with the last member of the team, Bruce Banner, a communications specialist who lived in the wilds of upstate New York, near the Canadian border, and as far from humanity as he could get and still be within the Empire State. Banner had issues with people in general, although once he’d acclimated to his team, he’d been able to function as part of that unit. He was brilliant with technology, and Peggy had whispered that between him and Stark, they’d developed a communications protocol that was both completely secure, and able to tunnel through any degree of interference, physical or electronic, to create a reliable, secure channel. It had been Steve’s lifeline on more than one mission.

Banner was also board-certified psychologist, although he didn’t really practice – he’d wanted the certification for self-diagnosis more than anything. But he and Steve talked. A lot. And Bruce knew how to listen. He posited that Steve threw himself into things – like dangerous missions – as a coping mechanism. He couldn’t control the danger of the mission, so there wasn’t really a corollary between his emotional state and the size or scope of the mission, but Bruce did note that the more emotionally compromised Steve was, the more eager he tended to be about a mission. 

“I honestly had never seen him quite so … enthusiastic, I guess – about a mission before. Focused, yeah. Committed, totally. But when he learned it was your team that was held by the insurgents. Shit, man. I don’t think there’s a force on any plane of existence that could have held him back.”

“Does he put himself in unnecessary danger?” Bucky had asked, leaning forward and watching Banner’s weary-looking face draw in on itself as he considered the question.

“Hard to say. He never backs down, but this is Steve we’re talking about –“

“He _never_ backs down. Ever. Stupid punk.”

“Yeah, exactly. 

Steve never backed down.

Yet, he’d backed down over his feelings for Bucky. Over the past three months, Bucky had examined every moment of every day since he’d met Steve Rogers in that schoolyard scuffle. He’d catalogued every scrape and wound. Every fight and ambush, every bully they’d taken down together, every brawl Bucky’d dragged Steve out of. Every time Bucky had told him excitedly about a new person in his life, every time Steve had come back from a date announcing that he really liked the person, but they’d agreed to be friends rather than pursue a relationship.

Every look. Every touch. Every sound.

And still, until the day of his wedding, he could not see a moment when Steve had revealed his feelings to him.

And yet, everyone who knew Steve knew he loved Bucky. Steve had apparently always been open about it with everyone with whom he had a relationship. Except Bucky. 

Steve never showed that face to Bucky.

This revelation brought with it a sense of relief over not missing important cues, yet a sick sense of revulsion that somehow Steve had felt it necessary to completely mask his feelings for Bucky so he’d never even guess, never entertain the idea that Steve might be interested in anything romantic or sexual with him.

Was his fear of rejection _that_ debilitating?

Had Bucky ever done anything to anyone to make Steve that fearful?

Steve Rogers had never backed down from a fight. Yet Steve Rogers had left the battlefield before the fight had even begun when it came to loving Bucky Barnes.

Except for the day of Bucky’s wedding to Connie. Was it because of the finality of it, the removal of any possibility of a ghost of a chance? Because Steve couldn’t have known about the specific conditions of his planned marriage to Connie – they hadn’t shared it with anyone up until the moment Bucky told Steve in their apartment.

For whatever reason, Steve had finally drawn the courage to stretch outside the calm place within himself to reach for Bucky, to say what he felt at last. Bucky had finally seen the face that Steve had kept hidden.

And the gulf that already existed between them had proved too wide to overcome, and Bucky and Steve had lost each other before they were even together.

Bucky could see now what Steve had done. Walls and subterfuges and hidden truths and secrets, all designed to protect the safety of the calm place, all designed to keep Steve safe. He was vulnerable outside the calm place, and Bucky knowing his team, knowing how Bucky’s capture had driven him, it revealed too much of Steve in the raw, left his defenses down, and exposed him to a hurt that could have cut him through flesh and sinew and bone, and left him bleeding, broken, bereft.

Bucky got it now. Steve hadn’t shut him out to be cruel or because he didn’t trust him. Steve shut him out because it was the only way Steve could cope. Losing Bucky was to Steve as big as losing his Mom. As big as dying when he was 10.

The enormity of it took Bucky’s breath away. They had both been so incredibly stupid. Blinded, each by their own fear of being destroyed by the hurt. Bucky, masking his pain with a succession of lovers, none of whom meant as much to him as that one, single punk he called best friend. Steve, disappearing into his calm place to avoid hurt and rejection, to avoid feeling too much. To avoid the inevitable shatter of his heart.

Stupid, stupid boy.

Bucky had to convince him that his love was real. That it wasn’t a temporary thing, that it would last. That it had always been there, even when Bucky hadn’t recognized it as love. That he was committed. Now. Tomorrow. Til the end of the line, the line that extended from Steve to him to eternity.

Bucky believed in what he felt for Steve, understood it for the pure, irrevocable thing that it was. He just had to have that punk back so he could convince him, too.

But first, shower. Teeth brushed. Body clothed. And there were arrangements he had to make, people he needed to put into position. It had been awhile since he’d mounted a campaign, and he might be out of practice, but hell, he’d just pulled off an almost wedding three months ago. 

Going toe to toe with Steve Rogers to convince him he was loved, treasured, adored?

The stakes had never been higher. But the reward? The reward was beyond measure. 

&&&

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go! I would love to know what you think of the story so far - I appreciate comments that are compliments, and I appreciate comments that are critique. I see there are subscriptions and bookmarks, but not many kudos, and even fewer comments. Come on, please - let me know what you think! Okay, I am kind of spoiled with the response some of my other stories have gotten, but I really would like to know how I'm doing with this, my first ever modern-day AU. In any fandom. Like, in the history of the world as I know it! :)
> 
> Seriously, thank you for reading. And thanks especially to the folks on Tumblr who prodded me for updates and new chapters, and provided notes on what was working and what wasn't, so I ended up doing a massive revision on the story before I began posting it here. I couldn't have gotten this far without you!


	18. Steve Rogers (at last)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve returns home from a mission with his new team to find all the threads of his life have come together, and Bucky is waiting for him.
> 
> But can he face him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh! This chapter has been giving me fits, and then it started to get a lot longer than I originally planned. So I've broken it up. Baby steps are being made, the stage is being set, all that good stuff.
> 
> In the meantime, I realized that Steve is actually me, and that realization has unleashed a whole buttload of ancient emotions, so that's made writing this that much more difficult. Yeah, you can keep your feelings so buttoned up, without even realizing it, that no one knows what you're feeling, especially not the person you love. And the fear that that person may not be able to handle learning you're in love with them? Yeah, that happens, too. It happened to me. I told him, "I love you," and that's the moment our friendship ended. So Steve wasn't being stupid or a wuss fearing that Bucky knowing how he felt would change things. But just walking away when he had everything he'd ever wanted within his grasp? It's something so many of us do, isn't it? Not allow ourselves to be happy.
> 
> Let's allow ourselves to be happy. But first ... some angst.

Steve rested his cheek against the cool of the window, his eyes closed as he drifted. His hand rested on his abdomen, pressing lightly against the pain there, stabilizing the injury. His breath was shallow, deliberately so, to avoid jarring the damage. He’d bull it out, push it down to where he couldn’t feel it any longer, and just get on with things. Just like he always did. Pushed the pain down to the place where it didn’t hurt anymore. It wasn’t invincibility that made him “Captain America.” It was his ability to take a hit and keep on moving, like he’d done his entire life.

Fury had to have another mission brewing for him. Steve didn’t know what he’d do with himself otherwise. Since moving to Tony’s upstate property, he’d been restless, unfocused. His art had suffered, although he’d squeaked out those last few commissions he had pending when he’d moved. But his heart wasn’t in it. His heart wasn’t in anything. His heart … his heart was suspended, frozen. It was easier that way. It didn’t interfere. It didn’t sing, and it didn’t hurt. He could get on. Like with the pain in his gut. He pushed it down until he couldn’t feel it anymore.

Around him on the plane, he could hear the muted sounds of Coulson’s team, code named SHIELD because Coulson apparently loved anagrams. They weren’t Steve’s old team – nobody could be, they were irreplaceable – but they were good. He especially liked Skye with her devilish sense of humor, her constant wild-ass guesses as to what SHIELD stood for that week, her inexhaustible energy, and her spot-on intel. Not in the league of Peggy Carter, but no one was. Never would be, never could be.

He also liked Fitz and Simmons, the science side of the team. Leo Fitz was the author of all the tech the team used, and he could give Tony Stark a run for his money. Although, if pressed – and Tony was nowhere in earshot – Steve would probably say that Tony still had an edge on the up and coming Scotsman. Dr. Jemma Simmons was incredibly clever, and he thought Bruce Banner might like her – she had a sweet disposition and an inquiring mind, and, like Peggy, she was of the opinion that little could withstand the calming influence of a good cup of tea. She had checked him over when they’d rendezvoused, and declared him still living, and that was good enough for him. He zoned out on the litany of injuries and care instructions. He really didn’t. Care, that is.

Yeah, they weren’t Tony and Bruce, but they were pretty darned good. And fun to be around, without being non-stop embarrassing, so that was a plus.

Then there was Trip – Antione Triplett – who was an even-tempered guy with a keen eye and a good head for strategy in the moment. He was good at planning, but he really shone in crisis mode, where he could pull together information and form opinions and plans right where he stood – good ones, actionable ones. Plans that could keep a unit alive and functioning. He was a good soldier and a good man. Good leader one day, even. He was also beautiful, with high cheekbones and soulful eyes, and gorgeous dark skin. He reminded Steve a lot of Sam, the same level-headed, practical approach to everything, yet gentle, kind, mindful. If Steve were inclined – which he never was, truth be told – and Trip were gay, Steve could be tempted. None out of two, however, and Trip was a good opponent in chess or checkers, someone to hang out with, not to take home.

That left the last two members of Coulson’s team. Ward and MacKenzie, or Mac for short. Ward was the sniper, cold, aloof, but deadly accurate. He wasn’t a Barton or even a … well. He _wasn’t_. But he was serviceable. He could do without that chip on his shoulder, and until he got rid of it, he had the potential to be a problem, but he got the job done. On occasion, Steve had caught Ward looking at Skye like he wanted to cry, and he idly wondered what the story was there. But the look of longing on Ward’s face kind of humanized the guy a bit, made him seem less of an asshole. Especially since Skye didn’t seem to notice, or chose not to. A romance in a team this small, with the intensity of the missions they favored, it could be a bad thing. A really, really bad thing. Like longing between friends was … well, no. that was in the past, pushed down, locked up, where it belonged.

Mac played off Trip, and he was the guy most likely to be on his six. He was fiercely protective of his unit, a steady presence and a healing balm. The guy could fix anything, too, kinda like Thor had done on his team. Mac sort of straddled the roles both Riley and Thor held in his own unit, before everything went to shit in that compound in Afghanistan and … yeah. Best not to think of that. He’d spent nearly four months not thinking about that, or gray-blue eyes, or dark brown hair, or cheekbones and a jaw he wanted lick, and certainly not about lips curved into a sinfully playful smile that he wanted to kiss, to bite, to ...

No, he wasn’t going to think about that. Not now, not ever. That wasn’t for him. That was _never_ for him.

He tried to turn his focus outward, grab onto the distraction of the team moving and murmuring around him. Not his team, not yet. But maybe, enough missions, they would be. Or he wouldn’t. Be.

“Yes, sir. I understand. Thank you, sir,” Coulson said quietly into his headset, his perpetual half-smile masking any true emotion. Steve glanced over and caught Phil’s eye, but he just shook his head with a smile and pointed to the headset without giving anything away. When he pulled off the headset, he looked directly at Steve and smiled gently. “We’re diverting to Stark’s airfield. There’ll be a medical team standing by when we arrive, Captain,” Coulson told him quietly.

Steve shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t want the extra attention. He wanted to live with his pain. With the distraction of physical pain. “Don’t need ‘em. Jemma already checked me out.”

Jemma smacked him up the side of the head, none too gently for such a tiny woman. Steve twisted in his seat and glared up at her while she told him, “And if you’d been listening, you would know that I said you need to have a full workup as soon as you get home. I pulled out the slug and stitched you up, but you could have internal bleeding, Captain. Possibly broken ribs from that altercation. You need a proper doctor with proper equipment,” Jemma Simmons corrected him with a sweet smile that masked the steel underneath. Then she turned away and settled herself into a seat next to Fitz, who handed her a magazine without looking up from his tablet. Steve chuckled to himself at the easy, seamless way they worked together even as a lump formed in his throat mourning something he wouldn’t name, something he couldn’t have.

“So, doctors. Well, doctor. Doctor Helen Cho is on call tonight, she’ll meet us when we land.” Steve opened his mouth to protest and Coulson held up a finger, arching his eyebrow in challenge. Steve snapped his mouth shut and grimaced as Coulson said, “If nothing else, consider the practicality – you are not going to be cleared for another mission until you get the go sign from Medical. From Dr. Cho specifically.”

Steve bit down the urge to cross his arms over his chest and sulk. For one thing, the pressure he applied to his abdomen held the pain of the wound in place. For another, he wasn’t going to give Coulson the satisfaction of giving him another lecture. He let his silence speak for him, and closed his eyes to give the appearance of dozing off. A soft scoff from Coulson told him he wasn’t fooling anyone, but he didn’t really care. He just wanted to be left alone.

Doctors. What were they going to do? Patch him up so he can go get shot up again. One day he’d get sufficiently shot up so they wouldn’t have to. He let that thought settle into his bones, and drifted.

&&&

“Cap, we’ve landed,” a voice told him as a gentle nudge to his shoulder prodded him awake. 

“Huh?” he asked – intelligent, he knew, but he’d been having a good dream that he really would have preferred to finish. A really good, really vivid, really … well, it was a _good_ dream. Awake, he really didn’t want to think about _that_. _Him_. And he really hoped that his body wasn’t showing just how awesome that dream was. _How much he missed him._ He cracked an eye and glanced down, relieved to see he had a plush throw tossed carelessly over his torso and lap. So, no show for the locals. He blinked and shook his head. “What’d’ya say?” Yeah, that was cooler. Punk.

_Yeah, don’t go there._

“We’ve landed at Stark’s airfield. We’re deplaning. You had some stuff in the hold you wanted to pick up, right?” That was Skye, her eyes twinkling as she perched on the armrest of the seat across the aisle from him. “Up and at ‘em, Cap – you’ve got five minutes to get that pretty ass of yours in gear. Plane’s going in for servicing after we’re done, so unless you want to be serviced too …” she giggled as she shoved off the armrest and went to grab her own gear. “Better get a move on.”

Hold. Stuff. Right. Think puppies. Cold. Snow. Ice. More puppies. Grandmothers. Pissed off kittens. Anything.

_Anything but him._

&&&

The gear that Steve needed was his full tac suit, the one he hadn’t worn on the mission, and the one that probably would have deflected the bullet that scored a hit on his gut. The one that had a little problem down in the nether region, and that’s why he hadn’t worn it. Right about now, as the muscles pulled around the injury, he wondered if a little chafing might not have been preferable to a bullet in the gut, even if it hadn’t hit anything major. Anyway, he wanted to go over the design with Tony to see if something could be done to make it less … damaging. Yeah, that was a good word. Who the hell needed a pressure sore on their dick going into combat, for fuck’s sake? That could lead to infection, sepsis, compromise of the mission, all in addition to being really fucking uncomfortable. Hard to concentrate on the mission at hand when your dick stung.

So Steve shoved the suit into his duffle, shouldered the baggage, and waited for the ramp to lower from the cargo hold. He held onto the overhead webbing to keep his footing as the floor shifted, idly glancing around him as the gears worked to bring the ramp into contact with the tarmac below. He heard footsteps behind him and craned his neck to see all of Coulson’s team coming up behind him, fanning out across the deck as the ramp touched home. He frowned; it was unusual for them to deplane through the hold – usually they took the stairs, it was quicker and more stable. But each of them were carrying their own stuff, so maybe it was easier for everyone to just walk down the ramp than to navigate the portable stairs in Tony’s personal airfield. Dismissing it from his mind, he turned back toward the runway and started down the ramp, only to freeze in place, taking an involuntary step back up.

Across the strip were ranged his team, every one of them including Thor – and Jane, Loki, Darcy, even Clint’s wife Laura! Nat. Pepper. All of the Howlies, Fury, Philips. Connie and Joe. Dr. Cho and a determined looking nurse.

Jesus, it was everyone he knew in the world, short of his doctor and the kids at the coffee place he went to on weekends when he was in town. Oh yeah, and the clerks at his local Gamestop.

Everyone he knew in the world clustered across a swath of the airstrip at Tony Stark’s upstate New York house. _Everyone_. 

Including Bucky. Standing front and center, a few feet in front of everyone, practically at parade rest, watching, looking. Waiting. For him?

No way.

_Not today._

Steve turned to go back up through the plane when Coulson caught him by the bicep and steered him down the ramp. “Time to deplane, Cap,” he said softly.

“I think I left something up top –“

“Nope, I cleared the cabin,” Skye announced, coming up beside him and grabbing the other bicep. Between them, Coulson and Skye manhandled him down the ramp until he was standing on the tarmac staring at the assembled crowd. He deliberately did not look at Bucky, even though he could feel Bucky’s eyes on him. Burning right through him. Oh God, he was going to turn to ash from that gaze. And his heart raced at the prospect.

_Burn me._

With a cough, Dr. Cho was the first to break the tableau. “Captain, I understand you sustained an injury in the field. When you’re done here, you can join me in Mr. Stark’s medical suite, and I’ll check you over thoroughly. Dr. Simmons sent the details ahead, so we’re ready for you any time.”

“No time like the present,” Steve announced with completely phony and brittle sounding – even to him – cheerfulness. “I’ll follow you now, shall I?” 

He still hadn’t acknowledged Bucky. Hadn’t acknowledged anyone. Coulson and Skye still had their hands on his biceps. Jesus, was he a prisoner?

“Glad to see you’re game for a medical, Cap. Hated the idea of drugging your ass and dragging it down the airstrip. But you got some unfinished business you need to attend to now,” Colonel Fury said, stepping out from the crowd. “Aren’t you even going to ask why everyone you know is here?”

“Well, it’s not _quite_ everyone –“ he started to grumble, but Fury cut him off with a look.

“Yeah, yeah. Funny guy. This is your life, Steve Rogers. And it’s tired of playing games,” Fury countered, with a wave of his hand to encompass everyone standing there.

“I know, Steve,” Bucky said then, his voice quiet and calm. “I know everything. And I can’t say I don’t care, but I can say it doesn’t make a difference. I love you, and I want to marry you. I want to grow old with you and I need you to fucking _look_ at me, Steve,” he ended on an urgent, pleading note, his hand hovering near Steve’s, not touching, but Steve could feel the heat from it, proximity alert, he always knew where Bucky was, Bucky alert …

_Oh, God._

But Steve couldn’t look. Couldn’t face the possibility that those words, those wonderful words, weren’t reflected in Bucky’s beautiful face. Weren’t meant. Weren’t true. He couldn’t accept that Bucky _could_ really mean it. Not … Just not.

He closed his eyes for a split second, then opened them, swallowing hard. He turned toward Bucky and looked, then turned away again. Even though he’d turned away, Bucky’s face was seared onto the inside of his eyelids.

Open, pleading, full of … love? No, that was Steve’s imagination working overtime, filling in blanks that weren’t there.

He could still feel those eyes on him, burning. With what? Want?

_Want me._

“I’m really tired, let’s get the medical thing over with so I can sleep, huh? I can catch up with everyone tomorrow, if you don’t mind –“ Steve tried to shrug off the hands on his biceps and simply walk away. He’d done it before. And Bucky hadn’t followed. Hadn’t bothered, not in over three months. 

The hands stayed in place, and no one moved. He felt like no one breathed. He felt like …

_No air._

“At least talk to him, Steven,” Peggy suggested, stepping in front of him and placing a gentle hand to the center of his chest. To the scar, the crack, the place where his heart was actually broken.

“I can make it an order,” Fury chimed in, and Steve had to turn to look into his determined eye. “We’ve all had enough of this bullshit. He knows, for fuck’s sake. Secret’s out. It’s not a matter of national security, Rogers. Because Captain America has gone on his last fucking mission. You’re compromised. Look at you, you can barely breathe with the injuries you sustained. Your team is lucky they made it out of that firefight. You aren’t optimal. It’s time you took a break. A real break. A permanent break. And it’s time you got your head out of your ass and sorted your goddamn personal life out. Talk to Barnes. What the fuck. Yeah. I’m, making it an order.”

“I am, too,” Tony chimed in, gently pushing his way through the crowd. “Y’gotta get this cleared up with Barnes, one way or another.” There was a general murmur of agreement. Steve could feel Bucky’s eyes on him, quietly pleading.

Quietly bleeding the fight out of Steve.

“You're not the boss of me,” Steve ventured, a token try at defiance. His will was rapidly fading, and it was all he could do not to steal glances at Bucky.

“Pretty sure you're the artist in residence who isn't doing any art. In my residence. So kinda think I am. Your boss,” Tony countered with a smirk. Steve felt his fingers curl into a fist that could easily find its way to Tony’s nose. 

“And I'm your commanding officer. When you're on missions that don't officially exist. So, what Stark said. Now go and get your head outta that lily white ass, Rogers!”

Steve felt a growl bubbling up from his chest as he turned back toward Bucky. He tried to school his face into an unwelcoming frown, a grimace of disgust and disinterest. But he suddenly found himself looking at the open, hopeful, loving look in Buck’s eyes, the way they swept over Steve’s face, lingered on his lips, and kept moving, glancing downward toward his injuries, holding there under worried, furrowed brows, then shot back up to his face, surrounded by a pinched, pained expression.

Well. Steve couldn’t remember being so wholly the focus of Bucky’s attention, his regard. Like, he couldn’t remember ever when he’d had Buck’s undivided attention. Until now.

And he had to admit he kinda liked it.

No, he liked it a lot.

_A lot a lot._

He felt like Bucky was really looking at him. Looking at him with intense, deliberate scrutiny. Studying him, memorizing him. Worshipping him? No, that couldn’t possibly be. And yet … It felt strange and exhilarating and explosive. It felt like fireworks going off under his skin, expanding, flooding his system with … what? Endorphins? Excitement. _Everything_.

Everyone was standing around waiting for an answer. How long had they been waiting? Fury looked at him and arched an eyebrow expectantly. Peggy’s hand held his gently, while the other soothed up and down his arm. Skye’s and Coulson’s hands had retreated; he was no longer restrained. He could spring away, it’s unlikely that anyone could catch him, even in his compromised state.

Fury glowered at him, but honestly there was nothing unusual about that.

Sam caught his eye and nodded encouragingly.

Natasha smirked and shrugged as the smile deepened.

Tony arched an eyebrow like he thought Steve was the dumbest shit on the planet.

The Howlies all clustered together and it looked like they were collectively holding their breaths.

Everyone was holding their breaths, waiting for Steve to make a decision.

He glanced at Bucky.

He was heartbreakingly beautiful.

_Take me._

Bucky looked like he might cry.

He glanced away again and scanned the crowd, the best people in his life. Thor grinned hopefully and Loki arched an unimpressed eyebrow, while Darcy and Jane seemed to be urging him on, fingers twitching like they wanted to take the reins. All the while Bruce – my God, Bruce was in a group of people and he was holding it together! Bruce gave him a small encouraging smile, and that’s what broke him.

Everyone he cared about in this world was here, silently urging him, encouraging him, entreating him. These were the people who had his back, who’d kept him from harm, who’d walked into the maelstrom with him, and come out closer, stronger, more a part of him each time. He owed them everything.

Even Bucky.

Steve nodded. 

“Okay. Not here. Up at the house. In private.”

The smile that broke across Bucky’s face was incandescent, glorious like the sun rising and filling the sky after a month of twilight. Steve didn’t know he’d felt cold until he realized he was warming in the face of the sun, Bucky’s sun.

_Shit. He was so fucked._

&&&

Steve had held firm about doing the medical stuff first. He needed time to regroup, think, get his feet under him, and any of a hundred clichéd delaying tactics, so long as it meant he didn’t have to face Bucky Barnes alone any time soon.

He could feel all the carefully shored up walls around his heart cracking like a fucking glacier calving into the sea. All the calm he’d been banking seeping through his pores as his heart rate picked up and his nerves jittered. Even Dr. Cho noticed his system was out of whack, and suggested a long soak in the jetted tub in his room, maybe some bubbles, stay until he was thoroughly pruny and the tension had leached away.

It sounded good. It sounded great, in fact. Until his imagination started inserting extras into the scene … candles, chilled wine, soft music, Bucky naked …

Steve yelped as he pinched himself, practically jumping off the exam table.

Dr. Cho turned and looked at him inquiringly, and it didn’t take long for her eyes to follow the line of bright red blush down his face, through his torso, down to …

Oh, God. He didn’t have to worry about meeting Bucky.

_He was going to die of embarrassment first._

“Well, I’m glad to see everything’s working,” she said blandly, arching an eyebrow and barely containing a chuckle. “I’m flattered, but –“

“It’s not for you,” Steve blurted, then turned redder, if that were possible, as he facepalmed so hard his face stung.

“I’m aware. I’ve never seen such an intervention. It’s kind of like being part of a romcom. I kept looking for Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. Living a romcom is one of my personal life goals, actually, only I thought I’d be the female lead, and Tom Hiddleston would be the male. Music by Green Day.”

Steve removed his hand and looked up at her, aghast but curious.

“What can I say, I’m a sucker for Billie Joe Armstrong.” She shrugged. “But, people were talking while we were waiting for your plane to arrive. Face it, Steve. You have a lot of people in your corner, hoping that you allow yourself to happy. Look, I don’t know any details, just what people were saying around me. But that gorgeous man who was waiting for you – who I would guess you were thinking of a few moments ago,” she added with a wry grin, “ _and_ who you’re trying to get out of seeing and having ‘the Talk’ with?” she air-quoted. He just stared at her, wide-eyed, heart racing, trying to quell the urge to run and hide.

“Well, it’s my professional opinion that he’s head over heels in love with you. He pulled all those people together so they could all be on hand when you arrived. For moral support, I guess. For you, for him. He surrounded himself with people who love you. But he couldn’t even speak, he was so nervous about seeing you. Frankly, I would kill to have someone look at me the way he looked at you. And based on what I’ve observed of your metabolic changes in his vicinity, of how you’ve been responding during this exam, and the look on your face when I just told you he’s in love with you, I’m pretty sure signs all point to you’re in love with him, too. So my prescription is go get him, tiger.

“Unless, of course, you don’t want him?” she prompted gently, her fingers skimming lightly on his forearm. “Because if this attention is unwelcome, I can also prescribe everyone gets the hell out of Dodge and leaves you alone. You’re my patient and you come first, but I just assumed –“

“I don’t know what I want,” Steve spat out nervously. “I,” he started, then licked his lips that had suddenly gone chapped and dry. “I never thought I’d see him again. We didn’t part on the best of terms. I walked away …”

“Hmm. So this really is a classic romcom,” she guessed, and smiled gently at him. “Do you want to just see how it goes, or do you want me to intervene. I don’t know these people, well, not most of them, I would like to get to know Dr. Banner better – do you know if he’s single?

“I, uh, I think he’s asexual?” Steve spluttered, thrown off-kilter by her rapid fire change in direction.

“Oh. Well, that’s okay, he’s still very interesting. Anyway, I don’t think he’d hold it against me if I acted in the best interests of my patient, even if everyone came up here in the middle of their week to be with the two of you. So … get ‘im, or boot ‘em?”

Steve stared at her, dumbstruck, and chewed on the inside of his mouth. He couldn’t believe his doctor was offering to play referee like this for him.

“Let it ride, I guess. I want to know why he’s here, how he thinks he can change things. Like Nick says, everybody’s sick of keeping my secret. And Bucky knows anyway now. He’s been my best friend nearly my entire life. But … if I need backup, I’ll let you know.”

“Okay, then. I’ll have your – what number is it?”

“Six.”

“I’ll have your six,” she completed, looking really pleased with herself. She really was an attractive woman, tall, flawless skin, lovely dark hair, and a puckish sense of humor. She and Skye would be a riot together. Not for the first time, he kind of wished he would be interested, but that was okay. She was kind, and kind he could handle. “We should use a code word, something you don’t normally say, but that wouldn’t be too weird –“

“Freedom,” Steve said quietly. “My safe word. It’s freedom.”

“Okay. Well, everything’s in order, but you’re going to have to take it easy for a while with that injury. Your ribs are bruised, not broken, and Jemma did an amazing job stitching you up in the field – I can’t improve on what she did. So … _strenuous_ activity is off the table for the next few days, I’m afraid. But that doesn’t mean you can’t let yourself have a little fun. In fact, as your physician, I highly recommend it. You need to allow yourself to be happy, Steve.”

“I –“

“You deserve it. Now, as your physician, I am formally discharging you from the medical unit. I want you to go find that beautiful man, and resolve whatever it is you need to resolve. Whichever way you need to resolve it. So that you can _be_ happy. Okay?”

“Okay.”

_Kill me now._

&&&

Steve headed back to his suite, the rooms where he’d been staying the past few months whenever he was in-country. Tony’s house was really more of a resort, with its own airfield, its own mountain, and grounds that included indoor and outdoor pools, hiking trails, its own lift and ski runs, a winding road that tacked down the lee side of the mountain, and a lake offering fishing and boating options down in the valley. Its surface was still enough in winter that an area was even safe for skating for most of the winter. The house itself sat at the top of the mountain, and the airstrip was set apart by a copse of trees. He remembered Tony telling him years ago that dear old Dad had loved the location, but he wasn’t keen on the size of the property at the top of the mountain. So he’d blown off part of the mountain to create a large plateau where he could build his home overlooking the surrounding mountains and the lake below, where he could have his own airfield, and where he could live with all the amenities and none of the people if he didn’t want them. All before there’d been an EPA or other regulatory impediments to Howard Stark remaking the world in his own image.

As much as he might decry the heavy-handed way that Tony’s Dad created the place, he had to admit the views were magnificent, and the quiet … the quiet was healing. Or it would be if he could ever get out of his own head. Tony kept a staff on retainer all year round, and frequently sent folks up here for vacations or breaks. Steve setting up residence to paint was just one more way Tony could share his toys with his friends. And it had given Steve the opportunity to closet himself away from the life that he no longer felt he could have.

And now the house was full. Actually no, what Steve knew about the place, there were still unoccupied bedrooms, but there were certainly more people than Steve had ever seen here over the years he’d been visiting. All aspects of his life were converging, crashing together here. He half-expected people from grade school and high school to show up, Brock Rumlow and his asshole buddies to bully Steve, Alice Tennyson to follow him around spouting badly-written love poems written in Steve’s honor, the members of the Pride Club he’d introduced Alice to when she realized she really was far more interested in Sally Mathyson than she was Steve, the newspaper staff from college. But no, just his old unit, his present unit, Bucky’s unit, and all their friends. 

_This is Your life, Steve Rogers, indeed._

As he passed through the corridors skirting the main living space, the massive great room, he could hear the buzz of conversation, the tinkling of keys as someone had a go at the piano, and the smell of food. God, it smelled good! He definitely ate well while staying here – Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis made sure of that.

Steve heard and felt the rumbling of his stomach – he hadn’t eaten since they’d entered US air space, and even then, it was snacks on the plane, no real meals. Sandwiches, chips, bottled water or coffee to wash it down, a piece of fruit or three. Steve was starving, but he honestly did not have the emotional energy to face all his friends. _All_ his friends. Like, ever. He didn’t know where Bucky was, but right now, Steve wanted his room, a long, hot shower, clean clothes, and a tray of food brought to his room. Maybe a nap. Clean, fed, and rested, he’d be ready to face whatever was coming his way. Whether he liked it or not. 

_Spare me from my friends …_

So, of course, Bucky was waiting for him in the sitting area of his suite – his living room, really, the damned suite was bigger than the apartment he and Bucky had shared for the past several years – and Steve went from nervous to furious in two seconds flat.

Tony should never have allowed Bucky to enter his suite without his permission. Should never have allowed this intrusion into his personal space.

Should never have been part of this “intervention.” Jesus Fuck, what were people thinking? Forcing him to do what? Have a relationship with someone he’d walked away from? Because he didn’t really want him, didn’t trust him, could never trust him?

And that small, annoying, damnably honest part of his brain suggested that maybe Bucky didn’t trust him because Steve had never really trusted Bucky. That maybe Steve wasn’t trustworthy, that to be trusted, you had to be worthy of trust.

_Steve wasn’t worthy._

He wished that annoying part of his brain would come out into the light of day so he could punch its lights out.

Steve was about to launch into a tirade when Bucky stood up, palms out placatingly, and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to ambush you. I knocked on the door, and it was open. So I came in. I just got here a few minutes ago.”

Of course it was. Steve never bothered to lock the door when he was the only person living here, and no doubt Mrs. Jarvis had aired the place out knowing he was due home.

So, of course, Bucky came into the suite since the door was open because Steve himself hadn’t locked it. They never locked doors between them.

Except when it mattered.

_Fuck my life._

Steve wasn’t ready for this conversation. He really wasn’t. Dammit, he wasn’t. He needed some time to absorb the fact that Bucky was here.

Why was Bucky here? What was he hoping to accomplish?

Steve didn’t realize he’d asked those questions out loud until Bucky struggled to answer.

“I miss you. I miss having you in my life.” He grimaced as he ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. I don’t want to live my life without you in it.”

“So that’s why this is the first I’m hearing from you? It’s been nearly four months, Buck,” Steve snapped, feeling a sudden clenching in his chest, like he’d reached the crest of the highest coil of the Cyclone, then the swooping lurch as the world dropped away. 

_Four months._

“You left, but you didn’t leave a forwarding address. You changed your number. And you told your friends not tell me where you were. It took a while for me to get Natasha to even talk to me. You made it pretty clear you didn’t want to hear from me. I tried to honor your wishes. But … but I just can’t, Steve. I can’t live without you.”

“I –“ Steve cut himself off, feeling suddenly immeasurably tired. Bucky was right, he hadn’t left him any way to reach him.

And yet he’d found him. Ignored the apparent message, and found the clues instead. Tracked him down and staged this … what? Intervention, Dr. Cho had called it.

A part of him was elated, soaring, yet another part felt claustrophobic, under water, under pressure.

Everyone was pushing. Pushing him and Bucky together. Making decisions for him and shoving him toward what they wanted for him. Nobody asked what _he_ wanted! Well, no one but Dr. Cho, but she was his doctor, she had to ask.

_And God, he wanted._  
  
Steve’s head felt like the house was pressing in on him, the whole massive pile and the mountain, too. Too much, too many people, too many expectations, too much pressure, too _fucking_ much.

_These are my friends, dammit! They’re supposed to take my side!_

“I, uh, I need to take a bath, get something to eat, take a nap. I’m … I’m really tired, sore. I … I just can’t deal with … whatever this is. Not this minute, not right now.”

“I –“ Bucky stammered, his face growing red. He still hadn’t lifted his eyes to look directly at Steve, and Steve was just as glad he hadn’t.

Because if Steve looked into Bucky’s eyes, he was lost forever.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed, although he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. “You can let yourself out, okay? Just close the door behind you – I, uh, I don’t want anyone wandering in while I’m in the tub, okay?”

&&&

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, ouch. It's where this chapter needs to end, though. And yes, if you noticed this is now part 1 of a series. I'm not going to force you to wait until another story for a resolution, but there is another chapter to come. And a sequel is definitely down the road, but I'm kinda hoping for light and fluffy for that. Yeah, like this one started out to be.
> 
> Gotta love fan fiction as therapy. :)
> 
> Let me know what you think!


	19. Steve Rogers (let’s try this again)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve has to face his own demons, and finally take the steps necessary to release him and Bucky from the purgatory they've been living in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I am so excited this is done - the first of my multi-chaptered stories to be completed! I was determined to finish this weekend, so I could go back to work on I, Barnes over the next few days. Plus, I really wanted to complete the present I'd written for [Petite Madame](http://petite-madame.tumblr.com/) on this, the weekend of the horrific attacks on Paris. 
> 
> There were many attacks in different parts of the world over the past few days, and many people are hurting. Fan fiction is such a small thing in the face of that kind of pain, but I hope that this tale will bring a little light, a little love into your day.

Steve lowered himself into the tub, feeling the heat and the steam rise to meet him, the water embrace him, and the bubbles caress him. Hey, he earned a little luxury, and gently scented bubbles were one of his few real vices.

_That and loving Bucky Barnes._

Bucky, Jesus! What was he thinking? Bringing everyone – really, _every fucking one_ – up to Tony’s place? As he eased his way into the tub and stretched out full length, careful not to pull the waterproof bandages Dr. Cho had placed over his wound, he bit back the urge to slam the back of his head against the tub. He really didn’t need a concussion to go with everything else.

_But somebody needed their head examined._

And it wasn’t Steve Rogers. Nope, not in this case. He couldn’t believe that Bucky really thought an “intervention” in front of everyone they knew combined would convince Steve that they could really make it together. The opposite was true, in fact. Steve felt even more strongly that Bucky didn’t know him at all, didn’t understand him, and there was no point to it all. Steve was in love with a ghost, not a real person after all.

Maybe what he really needed was an exorcism, something to finally purge his system of his Bucky addiction. Going cold turkey hadn’t helped. Even when he wasn’t thinking about Bucky, he was thinking about not thinking about Bucky. Bucky was there in every moment of his life, every breath he took. Every risk he took, and every chance to risk it all. Maybe this was the last straw, the thing that would make him seek help – an exorcist, a therapist, a hypnotist, whatever. Anything to break the habit. Maybe then he could get on with life. Meet someone else. Have a relationship he didn’t feel honor-bound to turn into a friendship, because he couldn’t deliver on loving someone other than Bucky.

Steve was surprised to realize that he was fucking furious.

Shit, he’d been so down before, practically suicidal. Not suicidal, but he wouldn’t have fought it if he’d found himself facing down death in a real and present way.

Now he was spitting nails. Figuratively. In reality, he was half-submerged in scented bubbles, wiggling his toes in the water, and letting the hot water slough away the desert, the blood, and the soreness. 

It wasn’t doing too much for the tension, as he worked himself up even more.

He needed to have it out with Bucky. Once and for all. Clean break, call it quits, no take-backs.

_A life without Bucky._

Steve dunked himself in the bath and came up sputtering.

God, he couldn’t imagine. Even when he walked out of the reception that day, in the back of his mind he was already planning his return, planning when he’d see Bucky again, on his own terms, in his own way. 

And maybe that’s what he really needed. He needed closure. He needed to be in control for once.

And suddenly, Steve felt as though the walls receded, no longer pressing in on him til he felt his lungs would collapse and his heart would burst from the pressure.

He needed to be the one making the decisions. He needed to make his own damned choices, and he needed everyone – _everyone!_ – to respect them.

Okay. Well, that was step one of the plan. How to make it happen? Or rather, how to make it happen without getting his heart handed to him in pieces?

Planning. Mounting a campaign. This is what Steve did. This he could do.

A small smile played across his lips as he realized that for the first time in he couldn’t remember how long, he felt like maybe he did have a chance at being happy. Or at least, not terminally sad.

&&&

Steve padded back out to the living room of his suite, wrapped in the plush bathrobe that came with the place, barefoot, his hair still wet and dripping into the thick fabric of the robe. He was surprised to find Mr. Jarvis, the caretaker, major domo, and all around guy-who-makes-it-happen in Tony Stark’s life.

“Mr. Jarvis, I didn’t realize you were out here,” Steve said, rubbing dripping water out of his eyes. “What can I do for you?”

“You can make Mrs. Jarvis happy by sitting down and having a good meal, Captain. She’s made all your favorites – do us both a favor and tuck in, hmm?”

Steve smiled. This was a game he and Jarvis played. “Told you a million times, call me Steve.”

“And you, sir, may call me Jarvis. Or Edwin, if you prefer. No ‘Mister’ needed.” He pulled the lid off the central dish on the tray and stepped back with a flourish. The scent of Mrs. Jarvis’s – Anna’s – cooking wafted across the space, and his stomach paid him the indignity of growling mightily at the enticing aroma. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, a couple of veggies, and if he knew his Mrs. Jarvis, her Dutch apple cake for dessert, still warm from the oven. He didn’t resist the siren call of her cooking – he gave in immediately and eagerly joined Jarvis at the table. 

“Are you going to join me?” he asked as he dropped into his chair and started arranging his plate so he could enjoy his feast.

Surprisingly, Jarvis nodded, pulled another chair out at the table, and sat delicately. “I have already eaten – were I to indulge any further, I’m afraid Mrs. Jarvis would have to let out all my seams. But. There is a matter I wanted to discuss with you, sir.” 

Steve looked up, chewing thoughtfully. “Hmm?” he murmured around his full mouth, still chewing.

“Yes, sir. I understand that Master Tony can be a bit … enthusiastic. I have no doubt that he played a rather large part in the tableau you encountered upon arrival.”

“Heard about that, huh?”

“Master Tony can be quite boastful on occasion,” Jarvis said, ducking his head slightly as though admitting the most obvious trait of his employer and charge were somehow revealing a secret.

“Yeah, no shit,” Steve agreed, opening his mouth to shove a forkful of corn-encrusted mashed potatoes in.

“Indeed, sir. Plus he has been talking about it for nigh on a week now, preparatory to your return. And if I may, Mrs. Jarvis has enjoyed catering to a house full of good appetites and pleasant conversation. The emptiness wears on her at times – not that we don’t love this home, but company doesn’t come amiss at times. She’s been especially happy having you here, but you’re gone for such periods, and on such dangerous excursions, she worries, you know. She was greatly relieved when Master Tony did not ‘re-up’ as you say. She’s rather hoping that you’ll retire for real soon, sir, and make your home here permanently.”

Steve smiled back, but he wasn’t fooled. Truth was, Jarvis could meander around a point, dropping little bits of intelligence, drawing his listener in and disarming them with his apparently befuddled demeanor. But Edwin Jarvis was a tactician, a master at intelligence. Steve had asked Peggy to use her connections to do some checking on him years ago, curious as to just who Edwin Jarvis was and what role he played in Tony Stark’s life. Tony who was as brash as they came, the fucking genius behind some of the most incredible technological breakthroughs of the century, and as quick to trust as he was to down a shot. Steve had been pleasantly surprised to learn that after serving in British Intelligence for a time, Jarvis had started his employ with the Starks as the head of security for Tony’s Dad Howard. 

Happy Hogan was the official head of security for Tony’s company now, a company that his amazing girlfriend Pepper ran so much more efficiently than Tony ever could. Jarvis had slipped into parental mode after the death of Tony’s parents, and the arrangement suited them both. He occasionally travelled with Tony, but for the most part he remained here, at Tony’s mountain retreat with his wife Anna. Surprisingly, Tony might not remember to shower for a week, and he holed himself up in his “explodey apartment” in a retrofitted warehouse, but he visited often, showering Anna with affection and sharing late night confidences with Jarvis.

Steve had been surprised at the simple domesticity of it all when he’d first arrived four months ago, but now he was used to being a part of Tony’s stitched together family. And he knew Jarvis well enough to know the man would never do anything calculated to harm any of those he considered his charges.

Like trying to convince Steve to resign, to stay home where it was safe. It wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned it, but it was the first time he’d invoked Anna as he reason. That was just playing dirty … and it kinda warmed Steve to have someone care about him, just care about him, with no agenda or ulterior motive.

It was good to know that this person, these people were on his side, and on Tony’s. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to find a way to get back at Tony at some future time for putting him so visibly on display, though.

Jarvis could no doubt see the play of thoughts on Steve’s face, because he patted Steve on the arm then, shaking his head slightly. “But I digress. His heart is in the right place, sir. But sometimes he fails to understand that not everyone is like he is. That grand public gestures are not everyone’s cup of tea. That there are some things best reserved for private, quite conversation, not Jumbotron presentations in that fancy cinema sound. THX whatever.”

“Why, Jarvis, I didn’t know you were a film buff!”

“Mrs. Jarvis is quite fond of an odd genre of film. Superhero ‘flicks’ I believe they are called. We go to the cinema quite often these days, and Mrs. Jarvis thoroughly enjoys Master Tony’s media room.” He cast his eyes down toward the table for a moment. “I rather think she likes the young men in tight spandex, sir.”

“I do, too,” Steve agreed with a twinkle. He genuinely liked Jarvis, and often felt like the older man slid easily into the role of father, a figure Steve had only had through Bucky’s Dad. It was kinda nice to have someone who didn’t have to split his attention for another. Even when Tony was visiting, Jarvis somehow had time for Steve.

Which reminded Steve. “I’d’ve thought you’d be catering to Tony tonight.”

“I believe Master Tony has a large enough audience that he won’t notice if I’m absent from the fray. And of course, he has been here along with your friends for several days – everyone is settled in. But I digress, yet again. You have been quite sad of late, Captain – er, Steve,” he corrected himself at an arched eyebrow and raised finger from Steve. “It would be impossible to miss, I’m afraid. I worry about you. Mrs. Jarvis worries about you. And now with everyone here, all your friends … you seemed even sadder than before. I can’t help but wonder if that lovely young man who visited you earlier has something to do with it.”

“Jarvis,” Steve said warningly.

“I don’t mean to pry. But someone needs to look out for you if you won’t do it yourself. You have unresolved business with this young man, I’d hazard. And I have noticed that while everyone else is enjoying their vacation here, Mr. Barnes has been worried and very nervous. Mrs. Jarvis noticed that he isn’t a slender man, and yet he barely eats. I daresay this encounter has unnerved him as much as it has you. But trying to talk to him here while everyone else is underfoot, expecting you to do something big, you might as well do it in a fishbowl in the center of a stadium at halftime. Oh yes, I am familiar with the concept – Master Tony used to do pyrotechnic shows at football games when he was in college. I had to attend with the requisite legal disclaimers and release paperwork so he wouldn’t end up in jail. Again.”

“Okay, that image just completely made my brain explode, so you’ve got my attention. You’re right that I feel like everyone’s eyes are on me, and everyone’s expecting something. Like I’ve got to perform in some fashion. This is a private matter, but it’s like my life is suddenly reality TV or something. It really sucks. But what’s your point?”

“My point is that there are … alternate venues for more private and quiet discourse. If you would like, I could arrange such a venue. It is, after all, my weekly poker night tomorrow. We could exit by the side entrance, and no one would be the wiser –“

“You mean meet up with Bucky and go somewhere. I don’t know –“

“Rather, meet with him on neutral ground. We would not travel together. I have made a friend among your companions, a gentleman of similar age and experience. Although, I daresay I have been more fortunate than he was. He speaks very highly of you both.”

“You mean Joe?”

“Mr. Rocco, yes. I am eager to introduce him to my poker-playing compatriots, and he wants to go. I think perhaps this is a good environment for him. He seems much more at ease now than when he first arrived. But again,” he paused, smiling self-deprecatingly at himself. 

“So …” Steve prompted with a smile.

“He would travel with your friend Bucky, Mr. Barnes. You with me. We would rendezvous, and the two of you could talk in private. And I would introduce Joe to my poker, um, buddies, I believe is the appropriate term?”

“You know it is. You speak American better than you let on. Wait, so Joe can’t drive, so Bucky would have to –“

“Yes, I would provide him with keys to one of Master Tony’s cars. As you know, he garages quite a number of them here. We could even color coordinate if you’d so desire.”

“I don’t think we have to go that far, do you, Jarvis?”

Jarvis shrugged with a small, impish smile. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

That elicited an actual laugh from Steve, and he felt a warmth blossom inside at the gentle kindness of this man. And the small rebellions he allowed himself to enjoy.

Talking to Bucky. Privately. No one watching, no one listening. No one waiting to get the verdict. If they slipped out without anyone being aware, there would be no expectations, no pressure. Not in the moment, anyway. The idea had some appeal.

But first there was the issue of actually talking to Bucky.

Steve really didn’t know if he could.

“You’ll never know peace until you have this conversation, Steve. I’m not saying you have to jump into a relationship, or decide to end it. But I watched you earlier when you all came back from the airfield. I’ve watched you as we’ve spoken here. You feel something for this young man, something profound. And he clearly feels something for you. I have spoken to him for some little while, and I believe that what he feels is genuine. But you don’t have to decide anything, you don’t have to commit. But for your own sake, you need to speak with him, get the temperature of how you feel. And then perhaps you can decide if you want another conversation, or if you really are ready to say goodbye.”

Steve listened in rapt silence as Jarvis spoke, and found himself nodding thoughtfully as he concluded. “Well … yeah. Okay. I don’t know what we really have to say to each other, but I guess we owe to ourselves to say it. And I would feel better if I didn’t have everyone waiting for it to happen. Watching and plotting and taking fucking bets. You know Tony’ll be running the pool,” he countered Jarvis’s unspoken protest quickly. Jarvis closed his eyes and nodded sadly. Tony was probably already laying odds on what Steve was going to do. Probably had started the pool before anyone even got here.

“So, do I have your permission to ask Joe to approach Mr. Barnes with the proposal for a rendezvous in private?”

“You do, Jarvis.” Steve glanced down at his plate, where his delicious dinner had disappeared while they’d talked. Then he reached out and laid a hand over Jarvis’s. “Thank you. It’s nice to have someone in my corner who doesn’t have an opinion on what I should do.”

“Oh, I do have opinions. But in the final analysis, my opinions, Master Tony’s betting pool, all the expectations in the world are meaningless. The only thing that matters is how _you_ feel about _him_ , and how he feels about you, and whether or not you believe you can make a future together. If you don’t agree on that, then your path is clear. And it is yours to travel, no one else’s.” Jarvis rose from his seat then, dusting off his trousers to remove invisible lint. “I shall let you enjoy your dessert in peace, then, while it’s warm, shall I? If Mr. Barnes is agreeable, I would propose that you be ready by 6:00 p.m. tomorrow evening. Wear something comfortable, not too showy. It’s not a formal kind of place, but it has its own style of charm. We shall depart by 6:10, and we should make our destination by 6:30. The poker game normally takes about three hours, but there are always gentlemen interested in extending that period if there are willing players. Plus, we will have two vehicles, if you feel up to traveling back with Mr. Barnes directly.

“In any case, I shall call upon you at 6:00 p.m. sharp tomorrow, and we shall embark upon our adventure together. If there is nothing else, I’ll leave you to your cake. I or Mrs. Jarvis will collect the plates later – simply leave the tray out in the hallway as per usual.”

Steve smiled as Jarvis took his leave, then pulled the lid off the dessert tray. A thick slice of apple cake, still steaming in its container, several scoops of vanilla ice cream in a thermal container greeted him. And a can of whipped cream. He couldn’t help grinning. And he couldn’t help the little gasp that escaped his lips as he realized that Jarvis had maneuvered him into a romantic assignation, a one-on-one meeting with Bucky, and he didn’t feel angry at all. Nervous, yes. Scared out of his mind, maybe. But angry, no. Tony could learn a lot from his major domo on the right way to manipulate people. A flutter of anxiety, of nervousness, rose up in his chest, but he chose to ignore it for the moment, instead enjoying his dessert. Which he did, very much. Every last crumb of cake, drop of ice cream, and dollop of whipped cream. And if he shot the whipped cream into his mouth until the can ran dry, it was nobody’s business but his own.

And as post-prandial lassitude started to creep up his limbs, Steve decided that his next step had to be a nap. A tough mission, injury, a long trip home, an upsetting arrival, followed by a languorous soak and a delicious meal left him so tired suddenly, it was all he could do to stumble to his room and tumble into bed, sliding between the sheets, and rolling over to wrap himself in blissful slumber.

&&&

“Steve. Steve, darling,” was the first thing that Steve was aware of.

Then the insistent nudging of a long-fingered, soft hand on his shoulder.

Then his face, smooshed down in a puddle of his own drool.

“You had me worried, Steven Grant Rogers,” Peggy Carter’s voice admonished as he felt the edge of the bed spring up as she rose. “You’ve been out for nearly twenty hours, darling. Your phone is probably full now with texts from everyone.”

Steve rolled over blearily, throwing his arm over his face to block out the light. Only, the light wasn’t pouring through the curtains – dusk was already settling around the house.

“What time is it?” Steve croaked uncertainly.

“Nearly five. You’ve slept the entire day away. Which, by the way, Dr. Cho was very happy about. She was concerned you’d overdo, so to actually have you follow doctor’s orders – she’s quite chuffed with herself.”

“Five? But, I –“

“Jarvis checked on you a few times, brought your meals and took them back. I understand Mrs. Jarvis is a bit put out with you, but Tony says she’ll forgive you anything because you’re the all-American boy next door. Seems our Mrs. Jarvis has a bit of a crush on you, Stevie,” she concluded with a twinkle.

“Not a crush. She just likes having people around to take care of. Trust me – you’ve never seen a love affair like Edwin and Anna Jarvis,” Steve replied, untangling himself from the bedclothes and pulling himself up to sit with his back to the headboard. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened and closed his mouth a few times with a smacking sound. “Ugh. I feel like an entire base camp marched through my mouth.”

“Well, that’s what you get for sleeping nearly an entire day. Feeling better?”

Rolling his shoulders and popping his neck, Steve nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed, fingers ghosting over his abdomen where the bandage lay flat and dry across his wound. Only a twinge met his probing fingers, a recognition that there was damage, but no pain, no real discomfort. “Yeah,” he added with more enthusiasm. “I feel good.” He started to shift to get out of bed, realized all he was wearing was boxers, and glanced meaningfully at Peggy. 

She arched an eyebrow at him and chuckled. “Really, darling, it’s not like I haven’t see you before. Apparently, all of you. Intimately, according to the story you told Barnes,” she added, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

Steve groaned, but got out of bed anyway, scratching across his abdomen as he made his way toward the en suite.

“It kept him off the scent,” Steve called over his shoulder.

“It held him back,” she riposted. “Poor lad was terrified of me. Thought I was the one who dumped you, broke your heart, and that _I_ was the reason you never date past the first one.”

As Steve did his business with the door half-ajar, he froze, glancing over his shoulder toward where Peggy prowled his bedroom. Steve shook his head, finished up, and washed his hands, returning to the bedroom, drying his hands off on a hand towel. “What of it?”

“If you’re going to insert me into your lunacy, you could have written me a better cover. _And_ let me know about it so I could properly act the part,” she told him with a smile, extending her hand for the hand towel, which he gave her. With a conspiratorial grin, she balled it up and made a serviceable freethrow to the laundry basket. Then she made herself comfortable on the edge of the bed, legs swinging.

“I have to give him credit, you know. Tracking me down and speaking with me, even though he was convinced he didn’t have a chance against the ‘one who got away’. Boy was shit terrified of me when he got to my flat. Thought I was going to have to resuscitate him, he looked like he was going to pass out.”

“Are you here to plead his troth, Pegs?” Steve asked, a frisson of irritability rising in him, even as he tried to tamp down the panic that he needed to get ready, and fast, without tipping her off. That he was seeing Bucky in a little over an hour. _To talk._

“Just trying to offer a bit of intelligence,” she answered as Steve rooted around his drawers for clean underwear, a pair of jeans, socks. He slipped back into the bathroom to strip and ready himself. “That is my specialty, after all,” she called after him. He could tell from her voice that she’d gotten off the bed again, and was wandering around the room. “You can’t blame him for not knowing what you actively sought to keep him from knowing. And, now that he does know … well, I’d love to see you give yourselves a chance. Both of you. Of course, it would be best without all the circus trappings,” she admitted, shrugging. “Anthony can be, well, a bit overzealous. But it _has_ been nice this past week getting together with the old team, with Barnes’s unit. Getting to know _him_. Him getting to know _us_. Everyone meshes together quite nicely. Even Coulson’s team seems to slide right into place.”

“What’re you trying to say, Pegs?” he called, looking at his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he scraped a comb through his hair, slicking it back until he grimaced at himself. Too much. Too much effort, too fake. He leaned forward and shook his hair out, letting it flop naturally. Sticking his tongue out at himself, he stepped into his pants and did up the belt, toed on his shoes.

“Even if you ultimately decide not to pursue a romantic relationship with Barnes, think about trying to repair your friendship. You were best friends for over 20 years, Steve. You have to decide for yourself, but surely those twenty-plus years are worth something.”

“Even if we hid things from each other, kept secrets? I wasn’t the only one keeping secrets, you know,” Steve asked, coming back into the bedroom and making his way to the closet to pick out a shirt.

“That’s what you have to decide, isn’t it? Whether the secrets are too big, or if your friendship is bigger.” She smiled at him then, and held out a silk button down shirt in a blue jewel-tone. “This one, I think,” she suggested, her smile widening. “With the leather jacket.”

He took a step toward her, hand outstretched for the shirt, frowning. “Uh, for what?”

“For your date with Barnes, of course. Oh, don’t worry, no one else knows. It’s just that he has tells, and he’s been nervous and twitchy all day. He’s done his hair at least three separate times, and changed his shirt four. Jeans twice. I must say, he’s turned out quite nicely, unless he decides to switch it up again. And of course, Mr. Jarvis has a soft spot for Buchanan fudge – I always have some with me when I visit up here, just in case I need to provide him with some incentive. And of course, Joe has been practically giddy with anticipation, so I know he’s a co-conspirator.”

Steve felt himself go cold. “He’s gonna play poker with Jarvis and his buddies. You don’t think everyone else –“

“No, darling. I’m sure they think Barnes is nervous about seeing you here at the house. It’s perfectly understandable – he changed repeatedly before your transport landed too, and he’s been a wreck all week waiting for you to return. No, I don’t think anyone suspects you’re taking the field of battle and removing it to a neutral location. Excellent strategy, by the way. Mr. Jarvis’s idea?”

Steve nodded dumbly, shrugging on the shirt and buttoning it with nerveless fingers. Peggy stepped up and straightened the collar, twitched the fabric so it laid properly over his shoulders, and smoothed down the chest. “It brings out your eyes, my sweet,” she said softly, her expression fond. She reached up and toyed with his hair hanging down in his eyes. “I like this. Just be you, Steve. No roles, no acts, no stories. Just be yourself. Give yourself a chance, let yourself be happy. And if happy isn’t with Barnes, then so be it. Be selfish for once, my darling.”

_Selfish. Yeah, he could do that. Couldn’t he?_

&&&

Jarvis nodded in approval when he came to collect Steve, and led him down the service stairs through the kitchen and out to the 20-car garage that housed much of Howard Stark’s vintage vehicle collection, and a few newer additions added by Tony over the years. They slipped through a door from the massive car museum into a smaller, more human-sized garage containing a smaller number of less valuable cars, and Jarvis pointed to a black Prius with his chin.

“We’re going for stealth this evening, sir,” he announced in a stage whisper. “I’ve outfitted Joe and Mr. Barnes with a black sedan of their own. We can drift down the driveway to the main road, where we’ll turn on our head lamps to enter into normal traffic. No one will see us, I assure you.”

“Oka-ay,” Steve agreed doubtfully, not sure that all the cloak and dagger was really necessary, but he wouldn’t begrudge Jarvis the game if he enjoyed it. When Jarvis handed him a dark scarf to wrap around his face, he was tempted to question it, but as least it wasn’t greasepaint. He followed Jarvis’s example and wound the scarf around his face and neck, thankful that it was probably from Tony’s collection, and was soft, luxurious cashmere. He pulled out his own leather gloves from his jacket pockets, earning him a thumb’s up from Jarvis, who was tugging on his own gloves.

He opened the garage door manually to contain the noise, and they both slid into the cushy interior. The car started up with a faint electronic whine, and Jarvis eased it out into the driveway. He let it idle while he jumped out to close the garage door, and then they were off, at a sedate five miles an hour, engaging electric power only until they slid to a halt at the main gates. Another choreographed round of opening, moving, and closing, and off they went, lights finally on, speed picking up, and constant glances toward the rearview in search of pursuit.

There was none.

“So where are Joe and Bucky?”

“Ah. I sent them on ahead. Mr. Barnes will ensure Mr. Rocco has sufficient funds to buy into the game and sustain himself, and then they will arrive at the establishment to secure the perimeter and confirm there are no intruders on your rendezvous. I believe he also said something about ordering a couple of craft beers and a bucket of clams. Little neck, I believe he said?”

Steve had to smile to himself. Craft beer and steamed clams. Throw in some wings with blue cheese dip, a tower of onion rings, and a basket of sweet potato fries, and he might just let himself be seduced.

_Oh._

Was that what Buck was doing?

Seducing him?

Or just being a good friend who remembered what Steve liked?

To distract himself from the nerves the questions inspired in him, Steve instead asked Jarvis about the place they were going. “I take it I haven’t been to this place before. How come now?”

“It’s a place the locals hold near and dear, off the tourist path. It’s also a place where I can guarantee you excellent food, although not to the standard of Mrs. Jarvis, excellent libation, good service, and absolute privacy. There are plenty of trendy places that cater to the leaf-peepers and the snow bunnies. This place is for folks who live here year-round. Locals.”

Steve had to smile at the proud way that Jarvis said “locals,” as though he aligned himself with a clan whose membership was both exclusive and difficult to attain. Maybe it was. He somehow doubted that Tony was considered a local, despite the amount of time he spent up here away from the city.

“Am I going to have to pass initiation in order to get in?”

“I shouldn’t think so. My vouching for you should be sufficient.”

“Okay. What about Bucky and Joe?”

“I called ahead to secure their passage.”

“Oh.”

“Indeed, sir.”

&&&

It really wasn’t fair.

No, the universe was fucking with him.

Seriously, fucking with him.

If anything, Buck was even more beautiful than he’d been yesterday, more beautiful than Steve remembered him. 

The bar was homey, with genuine wood paneled walls stained a warm honey color, a gleaming bar with a mirrored façade on one side, and a row of booths down the other, with a scattering of round dining tables down the middle, each adored with a fresh spray of evergreen and a stuttering candle in a Mason jar. The bar itself looked old, maybe nineteenth century or older, and it extended a good twenty feet or more, complete with shining dark wood and brass foot rest, punctuated with comfortably worn looking leather-topped barstools. The mirrored backdrop reflected the room back on itself, dotted with the shimmering fluid in the bottles stacked along its length. Toward the back of the bar, a drum kit was set up in a corner, a couple of amps and an empty guitar stand. This place would be hopping on a Friday or a Saturday night. As it was, it was Thursday, and the place was quiet. Of course, it was early still.

Steve let the steady, homey atmosphere settle in his bones while he focused on calming his heart rate, his breathing. He hadn’t allowed himself to really look at Buck yesterday, not at the airfield, not in his rooms. He was afraid that if he looked, really looked, he’d be in thrall to his enchantment. Steve smiled to himself; he’d always thought of Bucky as being somehow otherworldly, unattainable. It let him keep a little of his self-esteem, thinking that he was beyond his reach, rather than simply not interested.

But he’d been wrong at that. What else had he been wrong about?

He didn’t have time to think about that any further because at that moment, his heart stopped and his lungs stopped breathing. Bucky looked up from where he was chatting amiably with Joe, and his eyes locked with Steve’s. And the smile that Bucky shared with him across the bar was a religious experience.

_Oh God, he was so fucked._

&&&

Jarvis cupped his hand around Steve’s elbow and steered him toward the table without another word. Bucky rose, his eyes locked on Steve, not even noticing the kind older man who’d brought them together. “Steve,” he breathed, and if anything, his smile grew more beautiful.

Did Steve dare hope that what his eyes told, what his heart interpreted, could be real? Had he miscalculated _that_ badly?

No, he couldn’t have.

Could he?

He was dimly aware of Joe grasping his hand and enveloping it warmly in both of his. Of Joe speaking to him, of Jarvis chuckling and gesturing toward a door at the back of the restaurant area of the bar. Of Joe getting up, clapping a hand on his shoulder and pulling him into a hug as he went off, chattering away with Jarvis.

Wait, that was _Joe_?

He’d honestly never seen Joe so in the moment as he was just then. He shook himself and turned his attention to the two older men knocking at the door. “Fellas, open up! It’s Eddie J and Fast Joey, come to take your money!” Jarvis called out in a bad gangster voice.

Steve felt his face split into a grin.

Eddie J. Fast Joey.

_Hello rabbit hole. I think my name is really Alice._

And then he felt the electric crackle of energy dancing up his arm, raising goosebumps, sending flares up his spine and setting his scalp a-tingle.

Bucky was touching his hand, just a brush of fingertips along the outside, along the knuckles. Steve felt like his body was coming alive for the first time.

And then it was gone, and Steve felt the air rush out of the room, felt like he would pass out from the want of it. Like he’d die without it.

_Crap._

“Steve?” Bucky said softly, worry evident in the crease between his brows, the narrowed cast of his eyes, the way he tilted his head to look up into Steve’s face. “You okay? Look, we don’t have to do this, not if you really don’t want to. I mean, I was just gonna thank you for meeting with me, but if it’s too much, y’know, I never wanna hurt you. Intentionally, I mean, I know I hurt you. But you know …” he tailed off, running out of steam as he just stood there, looking worriedly at Steve. Looking as lost and broken as Steve felt. As hurt.

“I hurt you, too,” Steve breathed in a voice he could barely hear, but he knew that Bucky had heard it because his eyes widened and he gasped, straightening up and taking a step backward.

“Yeah. Yeah, you did,” Bucky admitted grudgingly, as though it was something he was never going to mention, never blame Steve. And in that moment, Steve realized just what a thoughtless thing he’d done four months ago. Thoughtless to both of them. To all their friends. To what could have been. To what he’d always wanted … “But, that’s okay, I think I understand –“

“Yeah? Enlighten me. ‘Cos I’m not sure I do anymore,” Steve cut him off with a huff, dropping down into the seat across from Bucky. “Which one’s mine?” he asked, nodding toward the collection of bottles and glasses on the table. Bucky reached over and put a still-capped bottle and a clean glass in front of Steve, and then silently resumed his seat, watching Steve. His concerned expression had not eased, and when Steve glanced up at him as he pulled off the cap and tilted the bottle to pour into the glass, he shrugged. “Just gimme a minute.”

Bucky nodded and settled back in his seat, picking up his glass and sipping at his brew as Steve drained his glass in one go. Bucky’s eyes never strayed away from looking at Steve, though, and Steve felt equal parts warmed by it and frightened by it. Especially when they widened in alarm.

“Whoa, buddy, you’re movin’ a little fast there, ar’ncha? You just got discharged with a gut shot yesterday, Stevie.”

Steve placed the empty pint glass back on the lacquered wooden table with an audible thump. “Tasted good. I haven’t had a decent beer in a while. Y’got good taste, Buck.”

Steve watched Bucky’s expression, the quirk of the corner of his mouth as he fought the urge to smile, the darkening of his irises, the flicking of his tongue over his lips.

_Oh, God, those lips …_

“Yeah, I think maybe you need an ice water chaser, or maybe an iced tea, coffee maybe. Whadya say, Steve? Y’don’t want to get too potted too fast. Got your clams comin’ and I was thinkin’ a burger later? Jarvis says they got great fries here ...” Bucky cajoled with a hopeful expression. 

Steve allowed himself a small smile. Yeah, he did feel a little compromised from downing that beer all in one go. It did taste good though, cold and citrusy. Clean on the palate. He wouldn’t mind another. Wouldn’t mind the world to go a bit fuzzy at the edges, a little dull. Everything was too bright, Bucky was too bright, glowing, fucking glowing, and it was too much. He shook himself, picked up the menu of beers and grinned. “Hey, they do flights!”

Bucky’s hand reached out to take the menu out of Steve’s hands, the tips of his fingers brushing against Steve’s. He felt that energy jolt all over again, and damn if he wasn’t becoming addicted to it. “After. After you get some food in you. When was the last time you ate?”

Steve scrunched up his nose to consider, and realized it was dinner when Jarvis had stopped by. The day before. Yeah. Maybe that beer wasn’t the best idea he’d had, and he was beginning to feel like his life was a series of really poor life choices. “Last night. When I got in.”

“Yeah, so let’s look at _this_ menu first, hmm?” he suggested, putting the food menu into Steve’s hands. “It’s a decent menu. Y’got some nice places out here.”

“Wouldn’t know. Never leave the house when I’m in town,” Steve admitted blearily.

“What’s the point of comin’ all the way out here if you’re not going to enjoy it?” Bucky asked curiously, and then his face fell, as he realized what the answer was. “Oh.”

“S’alright. I got some work done when I first got here. And then Nick … well, Nick always has plenty for me to do,” Steve added, tracing lines in the condensation puddled on the tabletop.

“Yeah. He’s a bossy dude, isn’t he? Y’know, I’m sorry. For springing everyone on you. It was really his idea. His and Tony’s. I think Tony was hoping we’d pick up where we left off so he could throw a wedding for us – but, yeah. Anyway. I got out here with everyone and I suddenly realized you’d hate it. I hated it. But they were here. I cashed in the honeymoon tickets to buy everyone tickets, and then Stark stepped in and just sent his personal jet around to pick everyone up. I think everyone’s having a good time, if that means anything. I mean, the place is gorgeous, and there’s lots to do. And oh, God, I just can’t stop talking. I can’t remember when I’ve been nervous around you, but I am.”

“Yeah? Me, too. Nervous, I mean. I never expected to see you again. You know, with the missions that Nick sends me on.”

“That make you happy?” Bucky asked softly. “Is that why you didn’t want to tell me? You didn’t want to give it up?”

“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to feel obligated to me in any way,” Steve said suddenly, lifting his face and spearing Bucky with his direct gaze. It felt very strange to just blurt out the truth. Strange, and oddly good. 

_Well, wasn’t that just a kick in the balls?_

“Why, because you saved my life and the lives of my men? Steve, we’ve been saving each other’s lives since we first met. If hadn’ta met you, I probably would’ve ended up becoming an asshole jock, blow out my knees at 17, and drank myself to death because of what might have been. Y’know, I looked up a few people recently. When I was researching … well, you. Brock Rumlow? Yeah, deadbeat. In and out of jail. Total loser. That could’ve been me. You saved me from that.”

“Nah, Buck, you would’ve turned out just fine, better, even without me,” Steve insisted, shaking his head.

The waitress arrived then, a zaftig brunette with an infectious smile and a sassy attitude. Bucky ordered waters for both of them and a bucket of clams for Steve, plus onion rings, sweet potato fries, and a batch of wings for them to share. She nodded her approval of their choices, and sashayed off to put the order in. A moment later, she returned with two waters, each adored with a lemon wedge.

“I dunno why you always sell yourself short, Steve. Why you sell me short, too. I wouldn’t exchange a single moment of our lives together for time without you. You make me laugh, you challenge me. You make me a better person, and I wouldn’t be who I am without you. I kinda like myself, so shut the fuck up about how I’d be better off without you.”

“I kinda like you, too, Buck.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I also always loved you,” Bucky added softly, his fingers tapping a tattoo on the tabletop. “I just never had the courage to tell you.”

“Seems like we’re both a coupla cowards,” Steve observed sourly. “Was I so scary?”

“Not you. The idea that you might not like it. Like me. If you knew. When you came out, you were all piss and vinegar, but you didn’t say anything about liking anyone in particular, so I figured you didn’t like me that way.”

“You didn’t come out until long after I did.”

“I was trying to figure myself out. Figure out who I was if you didn’t want me. Guess I never stopped with that, huh?”

“Buck, you’ve been with so many people over the years –“

“’Cos none of them were you. I know I’ve been a bit of a man-slut,” he glanced at Steve, who shrugged. It was true. “What can I say, I like sex. Who doesn’t?” Again, he glanced at Steve, who shrugged again. Sex was okay, and Steve was good at it, but it didn’t drive him the way it seemed to drive Bucky. Maybe it would be different if it were sex with Bucky. And –

Oh.

Wasn’t that an image to conjure? Steve felt light-headed from the way blood rushed south at the thought of having sex with Bucky. He watched him, watched his lips form words, and wondered what those lips would feel like. On his mouth. On his skin. On his dick.

_Oh._

Bucky was still talking. “I’ve never been satisfied with anyone I met, ‘cos they weren’t you. The sex was great, don’t get me wrong. And every one of my lovers was wonderful. But I always felt like something important was missing. Even with Nat. And I realized that all of them combined couldn’t fill the hole in my heart where you live.”

“Wow,” Steve breathed as he started to go over. 

Bucky leapt up and came around to his side of the booth. Steve started as Bucky’s arms slid around him, setting him right in his seat, his hand at the small of his back to keep him steady. “Don’t fall over, sit back, Steve. Shit, I think you’re drunk already off one beer.”

“Just need to eat somethin’, I’ll be fine,” Steve protested, trying to push Bucky off at the same time he wanted to wrap himself up in those arms, trigger that electric current that was so sinfully delicious. He just didn’t want Buck to see how hard he suddenly was. With an effort, he shoved him off, and pushed himself into the corner of the booth, wedging himself up against the wall. “I’m okay,” he insisted.

And then he felt like a heel at the hurt expression on Bucky’s face as he held up his hands in surrender. He got up and went back to his seat across the table from Steve.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just … I’m not ready, okay. I thought we were done.”

“Steve Rogers, even if we never talk to each other again, if we never see each other again, you’ll still be a part of me, of who I am. So for me, we won’t ever be done. But if you really don’t want –“

“No!” Steve blurted. “No,” he added more softly. 

“No?” Bucky’s voice was painfully hopeful, young.

“No.” And Steve realized that it was true. The idea of never having Bucky Barnes in his life in some fashion was just … _no_. 

Bucky’s hand slid across the table, fingers splayed as he reached for Steve’s hand. Steve watched Bucky’s fingers, long, capable, beautiful in their symmetry. And then he placed his hands on the table and slid them toward Buck’s. They met in the middle and Bucky tangled his fingers with Steve’s, brought their joined hands up to his lips where he placed a single chaste kiss on Steve’s ring finger.

“When we kissed for the first time, I felt that hole fill, I felt complete for the first time in my life. I felt that life was not just something to get through, but something to celebrate. That’s what you give me. A reason to celebrate. I know I rushed things. Way too fast. I just couldn’t believe my luck, that you really did love me after all. And we were already having a wedding, so I figured what the fuck. I didn’t want to risk you changing your mind, but instead I drove you away.”

He folded their hands together, enveloped Steve’s within the warmth of his. He pressed his lips against to Steve’s hand, rested them there as he looked at Steve over the crest of their joined hands. “I don’t ever want to drive you away again, Steve. Tell me what I can do. Tell me what you want.”

Steve stared at Bucky in silence for so long, he watched the hopeful expression on his face wilt and die, the worry crease reform between his brows, and the light die in his eyes. He’d swear he saw tears forming there when they were suddenly interrupted by the arrival of the waitress and their mountain of appetizers. Bucky’s hands flew away from Steve’s and he readjusted himself in his seat, his expression slipping in a pleasant smile for the waitress, strained around the edges. She arranged all the food on the table, confirmed they didn’t need anything else right now, and left.

“Eat up,” he said flatly, waving toward the food, and grabbed a wing from the pile and started gnawing on it. 

Seriously, he looked like he was going to chew right through the bone.

Steve felt like shit. 

There’d been a moment, and he’d let it go. Let it die.

He never wanted to see the light in Bucky’s eyes die like that again.

But he didn’t know how to bring it back.

Steve dunked a clam in the melted butter, then popped it in his mouth. “So, you been doin’ research.”

Bucky grabbed a couple of sweet potato fries and shoved them in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “Yeah. I, uh, took Joe’s advice first, and spent some time figuring out what I wanted. Realized I wanted you. But, well, apparently I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did. You had this whole life I wasn’t a part of –“ he held up his hand as Steve started to protest, spearing him with a sober glance. “It’s true, Steve. No matter how you spin it, you had a life that I was part of, and a separate life that I wasn’t. I needed to get to know the person who wasn’t in my life. So I started with Nat.” He looked back down to his food and munched quietly for a few minutes while Steve slurped his way through his clams, pausing to crunch on an onion ring, then snagged a wing, masking his confusion behind the simple act of eating.

“What’d Nat tell you?” Steve asked finally, swallowing the chicken and reaching over for some fries.

“She wouldn’t even speak with me for a month. Everyone was mad at me. Blamed me.”

“No, they shouldn’t have –“

“You did. You blamed me for not trusting you. So I had to prove myself to Nat. Two years we were together, and the first time you and me have a fight, she took your side. It was almost like having a divorce, and you got all the friends, but you weren’t even around to enjoy them,” Bucky replied, words tripping over each other for him to get them out into the light, and Steve could feel the pain lacing every last one of them. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have … I shouldn’t have blamed you. It was my own shit, not yours.”

“Yeah, well, once I got her on my side, she helped me get Wilson to talk with me.”

“I’m betting that was more of a royal command than a request.”

“You ain’t lying,” Bucky chuckled, and rammed a bunch of fries in his mouth, grinning around the spuds. The grin faded quickly. “Wilson wasn’t thrilled, but he came through.”

“What’d he tell you?”

“What’d’you think he told me?” Bucky asked suddenly.

“I – uh, well –“

“I didn’t ask for any of your secrets. I just asked him to tell me about his friend Steve Rogers. I wanted to see you through his eyes. I believed I was in love with you, but there was this whole big part of your life that I wasn’t part of. What if you were different in that life? What if you weren’t who I thought you were? What if you were really someone I couldn’t love? I needed to know. And so he told me. And then he pointed me to Stark. I worked my way through your whole squad, even Fury, getting bits and pieces and glimpses of who you were to them. And I knew.”

“Knew what?” Steve asked, his chest suddenly aching with possibility. With finality. It was a Schroedinger moment. It was everything and nothing.

“I knew I loved all of you. Even the parts you hadn’t shared with me. And I had to tell you.”

“Hey, guys, you ready to order anything else?” Steve heard the waitress say, but he had no breath left to answer her. Bucky looked at him and then let his eyes drop down to the menu. Steve knew he ordered something, probably burgers or pulled pork or something rib-sticking. But Steve couldn’t breathe and he couldn’t take his eyes off Bucky and the world was growing gradually blacker around the edges. Then he heard the waitress move away with a faint giggle.

He started to breathe again.

“So, yeah, I did research,” Bucky concluded flatly, turning his attention back to the food.

There it was. The dying of the light. He couldn’t let that happen again – the light might not come back this time. Steve reached out and grabbed Bucky’s hand in his, squeezed, and smiled. “Not bad for a first date,” he said softly.

Bucky glanced up, and that hopeful look was back, bright and warm and beckoning. “Yeah? First? You wanna treat this as a date? I mean, we never did, um, maybe that’s where we need to start, huh? Dating? Like normal people. So if this is the first date, that mean I might have a shot at a second one?”

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? Steve didn’t really want to go back to the city. He didn’t want to go back to the pressure of living with Buck while they figured out who they were together and apart. Definitely didn’t want the pressure of the friends waiting for them to make their moves.

Bucky’s voice cut across his thoughts. “I mean, I don’t want to put any pressure on you. But I was thinking, since I work remotely anyway, I might get a place out this way. Away from the city. Away from everyone, you know, matchmaking. This seems like a nice area.”

“Pretty sure Tony would let you stay at his place.” 

“Don’t you think that’s a little close? I wanna do it right this time, Steve. I want to woo you, I want to make you believe how much I love you. I want us to have time to get to know each other, figure out how we fit together. I want the discovery and the mystery and the fun. And I do, I wanna marry you, when you’re ready, when we’ve earned that together. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you. But I don’t want to crowd you, and I don’t want to rush you –“

“So you’re just gonna walk away from everything –“

“I think maybe I won’t be the only one to move out here – I know Connie’s thinking of moving Joe out here –“

“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” Steve snapped, shoving an onion ring in his mouth and crunching down on it viciously.

“You’re worth it. We’re worth it. You’re everything to me, Steve. I’ll do whatever it takes to regain your trust, convince you that I love you. You, and only you. I love you, Steve Rogers.” He put down his chicken bones and grabbed a napkin, rubbing grease off his fingers. Then he reached out again and snagged Steve’s hand, lacing his fingers with Steve’s. “I love you,” he repeated, softly, reverently, a vow and a promise and a call to action. “I love you.”

Steve didn’t let the moment go this time. He brought Bucky’s hands to his lips and pressed them to Bucky’s skin in a fervent kiss. Electricity burst across his skin, leaving him feeling breathless and energized. “And I love you, too, Buck,” he whispered in a voice too overcome to be any louder.

The smile that broke across Bucky’s face was heartbreaking and inspiring and everything Steve ever believed heaven looked like. “So, can we?”

“Can we what?”

“Start again.” 

Steve smiled, and brushed his lips across Bucky’s knuckles one more time. He nodded, and this time Bucky surged across the table to capture his lips, fingers holding his chin as he smiled into the kiss at the same time Steve urgently kissed back.

They broke off and half stood there, foreheads resting against each other, breathing each other’s air. “Is that a yes?” Bucky whispered, unable to contain the smile that spread across his face.

Steve nodded, touching his lips to Bucky’s again, fleeting, a hint of a kiss. “Yeah, that’s a yes. Thanks for not giving up on us.”

Bucky pulled back and looked into Steve’s eyes, his own wide and open. His fingers curled around the back of Steve’s neck and pulled him close, lips finding Steve’s in a bruising kiss. “Never, baby. Never giving up on us. You’re stuck with me.”

“I’ll take that deal.”

Bucky grinned at him, the kind of shit-eating grin that started in his toes and stretched through his body to burst full-blown across his face, using every muscle and glowing from within. “So. Wanna be my boyfriend? Wait, you gonna be around to be my boyfriend?”

“Whadya mean?”

“Fury’s missions.”

“He already told me I’m grounded. No more missions. So maybe I make you my mission.”

“Yeah? I like that. And you. You’re _my_ mission.”

“Til the end of the line.”

“Til the end of the line. And a line is infinite, baby. You and me? We are infinite.” And their lips met again, striking sparks, and neither paid attention when the waitress came back with their food, tried to get their attention, and then just announced she’d pack it up to go.

**End**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, of course there will be a sequel. There might be more than one, as I'm now kind of intrigued at the idea of Bucky starting a new life to be near Steve, and of the two of them exploring who they are as a couple. I suspect this tale will be told in short bursts, so please subscribe to me or the series to get notified when a new piece is posted.
> 
> So ... what did you think?

**Author's Note:**

> If comments be the food of love, comment on! Kudos and comments are the breath of life for every writer. Help me breathe ... I will admit I am anxious to read comments, since this is my first time writing an AU. Not my last - I have a number of ideas percolating, but first I have several WIPs to finish ... and I am working on them, I promise! And yes, there will be more of this universe to come - watch this space!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for "Start Again" by debwalsh](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5230856) by [Lovesfic (me23)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/me23/pseuds/Lovesfic)




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